•jjjiy^;. 


i 


Patient  waiting  for  the  earth  to  bloom  develops  a  little 
child   spiritually. 


MONTESSORI   CHILDREN 


BY 
CAROLYN  SHERWIN  BAILEY 


ILLUSTRATED    FROM    SPECIALLY    POSED    PHOTOGRAPHS 


NEW  YORK 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 
1915 


COPYRIGHT,  1913,  1914, 

BY 

THE  BUTTERICK  CO. 


COPTRIOHT,   1915, 
BY 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 


Published  February,  1915 


THE  QUINN  *  BOOEN  CO.  PRESS 
RAHWAY,  N.  J. 


PREFACE 

As  a  student  of  child  psychology  and  always 
most  deeply  interested  in  the  welfare  problems 
that  confront  us  in  connection  with  the  upbring- 
ing of  little  children,  I  went  to  Rome  in  1913  to 
study,  first-hand,  the  results  of  the  Montessori 
system  of  education.  A  great  deal  had  been 
written  and  said  in  connection  with  the  technic 
of  the  system.  Little  had  been  given  the  world  in 
regard  to  individual  children  who  were  developing 
their  personalities  through  the  auto-education  of 
Montessori.  I  wished  to  observe  Montessori  chil- 
dren. 

Through  the  gracious  courtesy  of  Dr.  Mon- 
tessori, I  was  given  the  privilege  of  observing  in 
the  new  Trionfale  School  where  the  method  could 
be  watched  from  its  inception,  and  in  the  Fua 
Famagosta  and  Franciscan  Convent  Schools.  I 
was  also  given  the  privilege  of  hearing  Dr.  Mon- 
tessori lecture,  elucidating  certain  problems  in  her 
theory  of  education  not  previously  given  publicity. 

I  found  little  ones  of  three,  four,  and  five  years, 
111 


iv  PREFACE 

surrounded  by  the  many  observers  of  the  first  in- 
ternational Montessori  training  class,  yet  so  mar- 
velously  poised  and  self-controlled  that  they  went 
through  the  days  as  if  alone.  I  saw  such  proofs 
of  the  integrity  of  the  system  as  the  instances  of 
Otello,  Bruno,  and  others. 

The  pages  which  follow  constitute  a  series  of 
pictures  of  real  child  types  showing  Montessori 
results.  As  a  record  of  results,  I  hope  they  may 
contribute  to  the  world's  greater  faith  in  the  dis- 
covery of  Montessori — the  spirit  of  the  child. 

CAEOLYN  SHEEWIN  BAILEY. 

NEW  YOEK,  1915. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

DR.  MONTESSORI,  THE  WOMAN 3 

WITH  MAROHERITA  IN  THE  CHILDREN'S  HOUSE       .       .       13 

Showing  the   Unconscious  Influence  of  the   True 

Montessori  Environment. 
VALIA 26 

The  Physical  Education  of  the  System. 
THE  FREEING  OF  OTELLO,  THE  TERRIBLE   ....       39 

Montessori  Awakening  of  Conscience  Through  Di- 
rected Will. 
THE  CHRIST  IN  BRUNO 54 

About  the  New  Spiritual  Sense. 
MARIO'S  FINGER  EYES 67 

Montessori  Sense-Training. 
RAFFAELO'S   HUNGER 81 

Color    Teaching.    Its    Value. 
THE  GOING  AWAY  OF  ANTONIO 94 

Directing  the  Child  Will. 
ANDREA'S  LILY 108 

The  Nature-Training  of  the  Method. 
THE  MIRACLE  OF  OLGA 119 

Reading  and  Writing  as  Natural  for  Your  Child 

as  Speech. 
CLARA — LITTLE  MOTHER 135 

The  Social  Development  of  the  Montessori  Child. 
PICCOLA — LITTLE  HOME  MAKER 148 

The  Helpfulness  of  the  Montessori  Child. 
MARIO'S  PLAYS 163 

Montessori  and  the  Child's  Imagination. 
THE  GREAT  SILENCE 176 

Montessori  Development  of  Repose. 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Patient  Waiting  for  the  Earth  to  Bloom  Develops  a 

Little  Child  Spiritually         ....    Frontispiece 

FACING  PAGE 

Back-yard  Apparatus   for  the  Physical  Development 

of  Children  Is  Valuable 28 

An  Important  Physical  Exercise  of  Montessori   .       .       30 
Hand  and  Eye  Work  in  Connection  in  Exercises  of 

Practical  Life 32 

Walking  upon  a  Line  Gives  Poise  and  Muscular  Con- 
trol        34 

The   Kind   of  Toy  Dr.   Montessori   Recommends    for 

Physical   Development 36 

Replacing  the  Solid  Insets  by  the  Sense  of  Touch  Alone      70 
Building  the  Tower  and  the  Broad  Stair  ....       70 
A  Fineness  of  Perception  Is  Developed  by  Discrimi- 
nating  Different   Textiles    Blindfolded    ...       74 
Perfecting  the   Sense   of  Touch   with  the   Geometric 

Insets 76 

To  Match  the  Colors  Two  by  Two  Is  the  First  Exercise      84 
Grading  Each  Standard  Color  and  Its  Related  Colors 

in  Chromatic  Order 88 

All  the  Colors  of  Nature  May  be  Found  ....       88 

Every  Child  Should  Have  a  Pet 110 

The  Loving  Care  of  a  Dumb  Animal  Results  in  Child 

Sympathy 114 

To  Feel  that  Something  Is  Dependent  upon  Him  for 

Care  and  Food  Helps  a  Child  to  Reverence  Life  .  116 
Building  Words  with  the  Movable  Alphabet  ...  122 
Learning  the  Form  of  Letters  by  the  Sense  of  Touch  126 
Filling  in  Outlines  with  Color  to  Gain  the  Muscular 

Control  Necessary  for  Writing 126 

vii 


MONTESSORI  CHILDREN 


DR.  MONTESSORI,  THE  WOMAN 

A  HOLIDAY  in  Rome,  the  Eternally  Old,  the 
Eternally  Young.  A  long,  sun-dried  street  that 
flanks  the  Tiber  is  gay  with  fruit  venders  who 
push  along  their  carts  of  gold  oranges,  strings 
of  dates,  and  amber  lemons.  Italians  of  the 
wealthy  class  mingle  in  friendly  fashion  with  the 
native-costumed  peasants.  Someone  starts  a 
snatch  of  song;  a  dozen  passersby  take  up  the 
strain.  Where  the  chariots  of  the  Caesars  rattled 
by  in  yesterday's  centuries,  there  rises  a  stately 
row  of  stucco  apartment  mansions  with  terraced 
gardens  where  pink  roses  and  purple  heliotrope 
run  riot  over  the  hedges  and  silver-toned  foun- 
tains sing,  all  day  long,  their  tinkling  tunes. 

Leaving  the  gay,  bright  street,  you  ring  the 
electric  bell  at  number  5  Principessa  Clotilde. 

"  Is  the  Dottoressa  at  home,  or  is  she  keeping 
holiday,  too  ?  "  you  ask  of  the  porter.  He  laughs, 
motioning  you  to  an  almost  human  elevator  that 
lifts  itself  and  will  stop  at  whichever  floor  you  ask 
it. 


'  *4»;         ii '6:'N  fT  E  S  £  O  R  I   CHILDREN 

"  Yes,  La  Dottoressa  Montessori  is  in — in  fact, 
she  is  nearly  always  in  because  of  the  many  people, 
mainly  Americans,  who  come  to  see  her.  And  the 
children  come  daily  to  see  her  as  well."  The  porter 
shrugs  his  shoulders,  uncomprehendingly,  as  you 
enter  the  elevator  and  stop  at  the  fourth  floor. 
The  popularity  of  this  tenant  of  his  is  a  matter 
of  wonder  to  the  porter. 

As  a  low-voiced  maid  opens  a  great  carved  door 
and  you  find  yourself  in  Dr.  Montessori's  apart- 
ment, you  hold  your  breath  at  the  modernism  of 
it,  Plain  white  woodwork,  fine  old  rugs  covering 
the  stone  floors,  the  soft  tan  walls  covered  with 
a  few  beautiful  tapestries;  French  furniture  and 
electric  lights.  The  reception  room  in  which  you 
wait  might  be  that  of  an  American  home,  but  a 
glance  out  of  the  open  window  unfolds  to  you  the 
heart  of  the  tenant.  While  her  home  is  in  one 
of  the  most  beautiful  and  cultured  centers  of  Rome, 
Dr.  Montessori  sees  daily  a  tiny,  narrow  Roman 
alleyway  where  the  "  people  "  live  like  bees  in  a 
hive  and  the  doorsills  throng  with  little  children 
and  their  voices  rise  to  her  every  hour  of  the  day. 

But  you  hear  a  step.  You  turn.  You  are  face 
to  face  with  Maria  Montessori. 


DR.    MONTE  S  Sop,  I  •:,'.*' 

At  first  you  have  no  words.  You  have  seen  her 
picture  in  America,  but  it  gave  you  no  conception 
of  the  fine,  chiseled  beauty  of  the  woman  who 
stands  before  you  dressed  in  severe  black  that 
accentuates  the  marble  of  the  classic  features,  the 
depth  of  the  far-seeing,  dark  eyes.  Poise,  grace, 
self-control,  sympathy,  love  of  humanity  are 
written  on  the  face.  It  is  as  if  all  the  Madonnas 
of  the  imagination  of  the  old  Italian  painters  had 
come  to  life  in  La  Dottoressa.  Overpowering  the 
first  glance  of  courteous  welcome,  though,  that  ac- 
companied her  outstretched  hand  is  a  look  of  stern 
query. 

Why  have  you  come?  Are  you  another  of  the 
curious  visitors  who  have  besieged  her  from  almost 
every  nation  the  past  year  to  try  and  grasp  in  a 
day  her  method  of  teaching  that  she  gained  only 
through  twenty  years  of  patient,  tireless  scientific 
study  of  the  child  mind,  she  seems  to  ask.  But 
your  words  come  like  a  torrent  now.  You  assure 
her  that  you  have  made  this  pilgrimage  to  Rome, 
not  as  an  individual,  but  as  the  voice  of  thousands 
of  mothers  who  have  children  to  be  educated. 
They  ask  Dr.  Montessori,  through  you,  for  her 
message  to  the  American  people.  As  you  linger 


•£;  :- MANTES  SO  R  I   CHILDREN 

over  the  words,  madre,  mother,  and  bambino,  baby, 
Dr.  Montessori  smiles.  You  have  set  her  doubts 
at  rest.  She  talks  fast,  eloquently,  in  her  musical 
Italian,  and  you  listen,  thrilled,  fascinated.  Often 
you  are  interrupted,  but  always  by  children. 
Lovely,  dark-eyed,  courteous  little  Roman  boys 
and  girls  they  are.  They  come  from  you  know 
not  where,  are  admitted  to  Dr.  Montessori's  apart- 
ment quite  as  if  they  were  adult  visitors,  and  after 
they  have  greeted  her  in  their  graceful,  polite 
fashion,  they  quietly  run  about  the  room  or  sit  in 
groups  talking  together  as  if  the  apartment  were 
the  popular  meeting  place  for  all  the  children  of 
the  neighborhood.  You  find  their  interruption 
and  their  presence  a  help  instead  of  a  hindrance 
to  your  interview.  They  illustrate  by  their  loving 
friendship  for  La  Dottoressa  and  each  other,  and 
by  their  complete  self-control,  the  message  that 
Dr.  Montessori  gives  you  to  carry  back  to  the 
American  people. 

She  would  liberate  the  children. 

The  American  people  are  free,  but  American 
children  are  not. 

We  have  lost  sight  of  the  Republic  of  Child- 
hood, she  says.  Through  forcing  our  adult 


DR.MONTESSORI  7 

standards  of  conduct  and  teaching  upon  children, 
we  have  closed  the  gateways  of  their  souls.  We 
must  believe  that  every  child,  well-born  into  the 
world,  is  going  to  be  good  and  happy  and  intelli- 
gent if  we  as  parents  and  teachers  give  him  a  fair 
chance.  We  must  stop  commanding  our  children. 
Instead,  we  will  lead  them. 

Dr.  Montessori  tells  us  that  we  are  undergoing 
a  slow  but  certain  change  in  the  social  structure 
of  society.  Woman  is  being  emancipated  from 
her  domestic  slavery  of  yesterday.  We  are  creat- 
ing a  new  and  more  healthful  environment  for 
the  laboring  man.  But  the  American  child  is  still 
a  slave  to  the  capricious  commands  of  his  parents, 
which  claim  his  soul  and  prevent  his  free,  natural 
development  to  his  best  manhood.  In  school,  too, 
children  are  still  bound. 

The  vertebral  column,  Dr.  Montessori  tells  us, 
which  is  biologically  the  most  fundamental  part 
of  the  human  skeleton;  which  survived  the  des- 
perate struggles  of  primitive  man  against  the 
beasts  of  the  desert,  helped  him  to  quarry  out  a 
shelter  for  himself  from  the  solid  rock  and  bend 
iron  to  his  uses,  cannot  resist  the  bondages  of 
the  present-day  school  desk.  Curvature  of  the 


8          MONTESSORI   CHILDREN 

spine  is  alarmingly  prevalent  among  children  and 
is  increasing.  Instead  of  resorting  to  surgical 
methods,  corsets,  braces,  and  orthopaedic  means 
for  straightening  child  bodies,  we  should  try 
to  bring  about  some  more  rational  method 
of  teaching  that  children  shall  no  longer  be 
obliged  to  remain  for  the  greater  part  of 
the  day  in  such  a  pathologically  dangerous 
position. 

Not  only  do  we  hurt  child  bodies  by  the  con- 
finement of  the  school  desk,  but  we  wound  their 
souls  by  ever  offering  rewards  a~  '  punishments, 
by  insisting  upon  such  long  j  -  of  absolute 

silence  as  are  demanded  in  oui  schools,  and  by 
imposing  upon  children  a  program  of  instruc- 
tion that  is  built,  often  by  law,  to  be  followed  by 
large  groups  of  children.  The  normal  child  is  he 
who  finds  it  impossible  to  follow  a  program  of 
school  work  or  to  obey,  unquestioningly,  the  arbi- 
trary commands  of  his  parents.  He  must  follow 
his  own  bent,  providing  he  does  not  interfere  with 
the  freedom  of  others,  if  he  is  to  dig  out  his  own 
life  path.  The  abnormal  child  is  the  one  who 
never  resists;  he  is  the  child  who,  without  dissent, 
obeys  all  adult  commands. 


DR.   MONTESSORI  9 

So  Dr.  Montessori,  who  has  discovered  a  method 
of  free  teaching  by  means  of  which  children  from 
two  and  a  half  to  five  develop  naturally  and  hap- 
pily along  lines  that  culminate  in  a  spontaneous 
"  explosion  "  into  self-taught  reading  and  writing 
at  four  and  five  years,  speaks  to  the  American 
parent. 

She  begs  us  to  give  our  children  the  freedom 
that  is  the  American  nation's  boast.  Not  the 
freedom  that  would  lead  to  disordered  acts,  but 
that  liberty  which  means  the  untrammeled  exercise 
of  all  the  rn^al  and  intellectual  powers  that  are 
born  with  the  Dividual. 

About  twenty  years  ago  Maria  Montessori,  a 
beautiful  young  society  girl  of  Rome,  startled 
Italy  by  receiving  with  honors  her  degree  as  Doc- 
tor of  Medicine.  The  Italian  girl  of  the  cultured 
classes  is  essentially  a  home  girl.  She  studies  at 
home,  she  embroiders,  she  plays  with  flowers,  she 
is  introduced  to  society — then  she  marries.  That 
Maria  Montessori  should  desert  the  quiet,  rose- 
strewn  paths  of  Roman  debutantes  and,  after  tak- 
ing her  degree,  act  as  assistant  doctor  in  the  Psy- 
chiatric Clinic  of  the  University  of  Rome,  startled 
all  Italy. 


10        MONTESSORI   CHILDREN 

Her  work  at  the  clinic  led  her  to  visit  the  gen- 
eral insane  asylums,  and  she  became  deeply  inter- 
ested in  the  deficient  children  who  were  housed 
there,  with  no  attempts  being  made  to  educate 
them.  As  she  studied  these  helpless  little  ones, 
the  idea  came  to  her  that  it  might  be  possible,  by 
putting  them  into  better  surroundings,  and  giving 
them  opportunity  for  free  gymnastic  activities 
and  free  use  of  the  senses,  to  educate  them.  She 
gave  up  medicine  for  teaching  and  again  startled 
Italy — and  the  world.  Her  deficient  children 
learned  to  read  and  write,  easily  and  naturally, 
and  took  their  places  beside  normal  children  in  the 
municipal  schools. 

Then  Dr.  Montessori  carried  her  method  of 
physical  and  sense  education  a  lap  farther.  If  this 
method  stimulated  to  action  the  sleeping  mind  of 
a  deficient  child,  might  it  not  save  time  and  energy 
in  the  teaching  of  normal  children,  she  asked  her- 
self. At  that  time,  the  Good  Building  Association 
of  Rome  was  tearing  down  the  squalid,  disease- 
filled  houses  of  the  poor  of  the  San  Lorenzo 
Quarter  and  putting  up  in  their  places  hygienic 
model  tenements.  Dr.  Montessori  arranged  to 
have  the  children  of  each  tenement  gathered  in 


DR.MONTESSORI  11 

one  room  of  the  basement,  where  large,  free 
spaces,  didactic  apparatus,  hot  meals,  and  gar- 
dens would  make  it  a  Children's  House.  She  ap- 
plied her  method  in  numerous  of  these  Children's 
Houses  and  in  the  beautiful  convent  of  the  Fran- 
ciscan nuns  on  the  Via  Giusti. 

Again  the  miracle  happened.  Children  of  four 
began  to  read  and  write,  having  taught  themselves. 
There  were  other  wonders,  too.  These  Montessori- 
trained  children  were  self-controlled,  free,  happy, 
good.  To-day  there  are  Montessori  mothers  all 
over  the  world. 

To  furnish  the  right  environment  for  the  ex- 
panding of  the  child  soul,  Dr.  Montessori  urges 
that  every  home  be  transformed  into  a  House  of 
Childhood.  It  will  not  consist  alone  of  walls,  she 
tells  us,  although  these  walls  will  be  the  bulwarks 
of  the  sacred  intimacy  of  the  family.  The  home 
will  be  more  than  this.  It  will  have  a  soul,  and  will 
embrace  its  inmates  with  the  consoling  arms  of 
love.  The  new  mother  will  be  liberated,  like  the 
butterfly  bursting  its  winter  cocoon  of  imprison- 
ment and  darkness,  from  those  drudgeries  that 
the  home  has  demanded  of  her  in  the  past,  leaving 
her  better  able  to  bear  strong  children,  study  those 


12        MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

children,  teach  them,  and  be  a  social  force  in  the 
world. 

The  new  father  will  cultivate  his  health,  guard 
his  virtue,  that  he  may  better  the  species  and 
make  his  children  better,  more  perfect,  and 
stronger  than  any  which  have  been  created  before. 

The  ideal  home  of  to-morrow  will  be  the  home 
of  those  men  and  women  who  wish  to  improve  the 
human  species  and  send  the  race  on  its  triumphant 
way  into  eternity. 

So  Dr.  Montessori,  physician,  psychologist, 
teacher,  lover  of  children,  and  womanly  woman, 
speaks  to  us. 

As  one  says  addio  and  leaves  her  and  goes  down 
into  the  blue,  star-filled  evening  of  the  Eternal 
City,  the  night  seems  to  be  charged  with  a  new 
mystery.  Rome,  who  holds  in  her  beautiful  hands 
such  good  gifts  for  us — art,  sculpture,  history, 
painting — now  offers  to  us  another.  Stretching 
farther  than  the  moss-grown  stones  that  line  the 
Appian  Way,  she  shows  us  a  new  road — the  way 
that  leads  to  the  soul  of  a  little  child. 


WITH  MARGHERITA  IN  THE  CHIL- 
DREN'S HOUSE 

Showing  the  Unconscious  Influence  of  the  True 
Montessori  Environment 

IT  is  so  early  in  the  sweet,  perfume-laden  Italian 
morning  that  the  dew  is  still  hanging  in  diamond 
drops  on  the  iris  and  roses  in  the  garden  of  the 
Casa  dei  Bambini  of  the  Via  Giusti,  Rome.  The 
great  white  room,  with  its  flooding  sunlight  and 
host  of  tiny,  waiting  chairs  and  tables,  is  empty, 
quiet,  calm. 

Margherita  stands  a  happy  second  in  the  wide- 
arched  doorway  that  makes  room  and  garden  melt 
into  one  fragrant,  peaceful  whole.  A  wee  four- 
year-old  girlie  is  Margherita,  big-eyed,  radiant 
with  smiles,  and  tugging  a  huge  wicker  basket  of 
lunch  that  is  almost  as  large  as  she.  She  is  the 
first  baby  to  arrive  at  the  Children's  House.  Ah, 
but  that  does  not  ruffle  her  composure.  She  is 
already  alone  in  her  newly-found  freedom  of  spirit. 
She  needs  no  teacher. 

13 


14        MONTESSORI   CHILDREN 

She  places  the  lunch  basket  on  a  waiting  bench, 
crosses  to  a  wall  space  where  rows  of  diminutive 
pink  and  blue  aprons  hang  at  comfortable  reach- 
ing distances  for  little  arms.  She  finds  her  own 
apron,  wriggles  into  it,  buttons  it  at  the  back. 
She  is  ready  for  the  day. 

What  shall  come  first  in  Margherita's  day?  So 
much  is  in  store  for  her,  waiting  for  her  eager 
finger  tips,  her  electric-charged  soul.  As  her  great 
brown  eyes  slowly  trail  the  room  and  the  colorful 
garden  outside,  it  is  as  if  she  were  making  a  soul 
search  for  that  "  good  thing  "  which  will  be  her 
first  silent  teacher.  Her  glance  lingers  on  the  ter- 
raced rows  of  flowers,  the  tinkling  fountain  in  the 
center.  She  has  found  the  object  of  her  search. 
She  runs — no,  she  floats,  for  such  complete  phys- 
ical control  of  her  limbs  has  this  four-year-old 
baby — to  the  garden,  and  kneels  there,  looking  up 
at  a  redolent,  yellow  rose  that  has  opened  in  the 
night.  She  does  not  touch  it;  she  only  looks  and 
breathes  and  wonders.  She  has  watched  for  this 
unfolding  daily,  waiting  with  sweet  patience  far 
the  branch  to  burst  into  bud  and  the  bud  to  unfold 
into  bloom.  She  has  tugged  a  vase  of  water  each 
morning  to  offer  drink  to  the  roots.  Now  her 


MONTESSORI    ENVIRONMENT       15 

patience  and  her  service  are  rewarded.  As  she 
kneels  there  looking  up  into  the  petals  of  the  gold 
flower,  her  small  hands  clasped  over  her  breast 
with  devotional  ecstasy,  Nature  opens  her  heart  to 
the  heart  of  a  little  child. 

Many  rapturous  minutes  the  baby  kneels.  Then 
she  flies  back  to  the  room  again  and  glances  at  it 
with  the  critical  eye  of  a  housekeeper.  Here  she 
flicks  away  a  speck  of  dust,  there  she  picks  up  a 
scrap  of  paper  from  the  stone  floor.  She  peeps 
into  the  wall  cabinets  that  hold  the  Montessori 
didactic  materials  to  see  if  the  gay  buttoning, 
lacing,  and  bow-tying  frames,  the  fascinating  pink 
blocks  of  the  tower,  the  frames  of  form  insets  are 
all  in  their  places.  In  the  meantime  the  Signorina 
directress  comes.  Bruno,  of  five,  arrives,  bringing 
with  him  his  t  wo- and-a-half -year-old  brother. 
More  toddlers  trail  in,  two  and  a  half,  three,  four, 
four  and  a  half  years  old,  and  button  themselves 
into  their  pink  and  blue  aprons.  Independent,  po- 
lite, joyous  little  children  of  the  Caesars  they  are, 
each  with  his  or  her  own  special  happy  task  in 
mind  in  coming  to  the  Children's  House  this  blue 
day. 

The  wee-est  toddlers  drag  out  soft-colored  rugs, 


16        MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

orange,  dull  green,  deep  crimson,  and  spread  them 
on  the  wide  white  spaces  of  the  sun-flecked  stone 
floor.  Here  they  build  and  rebuild  the  enchanting 
intricacies  of  the  tower  of  blocks,  the  broad  stair 
of  blocks,  and  the  red  and  white  rods  of  the  long 
stair,  chanting  to  themselves  as  they  unconsciously 
measure  distances  and  make  mental  comparisons: 
"  big,  little ;  thick,  thin ;  long,  short." 

Children  of  three  and  a  half  and  four  take  from 
the  cabinets  boxes  of  many-colored,  silk-wound 
spools,  which  they  sort  and  lay  upon  the  little 
tables  in  chromatic  order  until  a  rainbow-tinted 
mass  lies  before  their  pigment-loving  eyes.  From 
the  bright  scarlet  of  poppies  to  the  faint  blush  of 
pale  pink  coral,  from  the  royal  purple  of  the  tall, 
spiked  Roman  iris  to  the  amethyst  tint  of  a  wild 
orchid,  they  make  no  mistake  in  the  intermediate 
color  gradations.  Other  children  of  four  and 
over  finger  with  intelligent,  trained  skill  the  geo- 
metric forms;  circles,  triangles,  squares  that  they 
are  learning  to  recognize  through  the  "  eyes  in 
their  fingers,"  and  which  will  help  them  to  see 
with  the  mind's  eye  the  form  that  makes  the  beauty 
of  our  world.  Small  Joanina,  in  her  corner,  runs 
her  forefinger  with  the  greatest  delicacy  of  touch 


MONTESSORI    ENVIRONMENT       17 

a  dozen  times  around  a  circle.  Then  she  fits  it  in 
its  place  in  the  form  board,  takes  it  out  and  fits  it 
in  again.  Then  she  looks  up,  a  new  light  in  her 
eyes,  darts  out  into  the  garden  and  walks  slowly 
about  the  fountain,  running  her  finger  around  its 
deep  basin. 

"  Signorina,  Signorina ! "  she  calls.  "  The 
fountain  is  a  circle.  I  can  see  a  pebble  that  is  a 
circle,  too.  I  see  many  circles !  " 

So  the  children  learn  through  the  exercise  of  the 
senses. 

But  Margherita? 

All  this  time  she  has  flitted  from  one  task  to 
another.  She  found  an  outlined  picture  of  clover 
leaves  and  colored  it  with  dainty  pencil  strokes, 
making  the  leaves  deep  green  and  the  background 
paler,  and  handling  her  pencil  with  careful  skill. 
Then  she  took  a  box  of  white  cards  on  which 
are  mounted  great  black  letters,  cut  from  fine 
sandpaper.  Holding  each  card  in  her  left  hand, 
she  traced  the  form  of  the  letter  with  her  right 
forefinger,  closed  her  eyes,  traced  its  form  again, 
repeated  the  letter's  name  to  herself  in  a  whisper, 
sat  silently  a  second. 

As  the  Signorina  directress  moves  from  child 


18        MONTESSORI   CHILDREN 

to  child,  smiling  encouragement,  showing  Bruno's 
baby  brother's  clumsy  fingers  how  to  slip  a  button 
through  a  buttonhole,  helping  Joanina  to  find  a 
new  form,  the  square,  she  watches  Margherita. 

"  This  may  be  a  white  day  in  the  child's  mind 
growth,"  she  thinks,  but  she  does  not  suggest,  or 
hurry  the  miracle.  She  only  waits,  hopes,  watches. 

Silence  is  written  on  the  blackboard.  Three 
hours  have  passed  in  which  over  thirty  children, 
barely  out  of  babyhood,  have  worked  inces- 
santly at  many  different  occupations,  have  moved 
gracefully  and  with  complete  freedom  about  the 
room,  have  changed  occupations  as  often  as  they 
wished,  have  not  once  quarreled.  But  now,  out  of 
the  ordered  disorder,  comes  a  marvelous  hush. 
No  word  is  spoken,  but  one  baby  after  another, 
glancing  the  written  sign,  drops  back  with  closed 
eyes  into  a  hushed  silence  in  which  the  whir  of 
bird  wings  in  the  garden,  the  fluttering  of  case- 
ment hangings,  the  far-away  sound  of  a  bell  are 
audible.  Even  Bruno's  baby  brother  struggles 
not  to  make  a  clattering  noise  with  his  little  chair. 
No  one  has  said  to  this  two-year-old,  "  Be  still." 
Rather,  has  he  been  inspired  to  feel  stillness. 

Out  of  the  restful  calm  of  the  room  comes  the 


MONTESSORI    ENVIRONMENT      19 

whispered  call  of  the  Signorina :  "  Bruno,  Piccola, 
Maria,  Joanina,  Margherita ! "  Lightly,  noise- 
lessly, joyously  the  children  come  and  huddle  in 
a  hushed  group  about  the  directress.  She  has 
called  to  the  soul  of  each  child,  she  has  com- 
mended them  for  their  self-taught  lesson  in  control. 

As  the  work  with  the  didactic  materials  is  taken 
up  again,  Margherita  sits  in  a  little  chair  for  a 
space,  quiet,  reflective.  Her  lips  move,  her  fingers 
trace  signs  in  the  air  and  on  the  table  before 
her.  The  Game  of  Silence  has  helped  this  four- 
year-old  with  her  spirit  unfolding.  Now,  with  a 
sudden  impulse,  she  darts  to  the  blackboard,  seizes 
a  piece  of  chalk,  writes. 

"Ma-ma!    Ma-ma!" 

Margherita  writes  it  a  dozen  times  in  clear, 
flowing  script  with  breathless,  eager  strokes. 

"  Signorina,  Signorina,  I  write — I  write  about 
my  mother.  I  write!  "  she  joyously  interpolates. 

The  other  children  look  up  with  sympathetic 
interest,  some  leaving  their  work  to  crowd  about 
the  victorious  Margherita.  All  of  them  voice  their 
sympathy. 

"  Margherita  writes,"  they  say.  With  the 
older  ones  who  have  already  reached  this  wonder 


20        MONTESSORI   CHILDREN 

lap  in  their  education  there  is  a  note  of  non- 
chalance. 

"  We  also  write,"  they  seem  to  say.  With  the 
tiny  ones  there  is  a  note  of  hopeful  promise. 

"  Some  day  we,  too,  will  find  that  we  can  write," 
they  seem  to  say. 

Margherita  covers  the  blackboard  with  clear, 
big  script.  She  erases  it  all  for  the  sheer  joy  of 
assuring  herself  that  she  is  able  to  write  it  all 
over  again.  When  the  luncheon  hour  comes,  she 
looks  back  longingly  at  the  blackboard  as  she  lays 
plates  on  the  little  tables  with  dainty  precision, 
places  knife,  fork,  and  spoon  deftly,  carries  five 
tumblers  at  a  time  on  a  tray  without  dropping 
one,  and  passes  a  tureen  of  hot  soup  that  is  so 
large  as  to  almost  hide  her  small  self.  Even  the 
happiness  of  being  one  of  such  a  happy  "  party," 
of  eating  one's  lunch  of  peas  and  sweet  wheat 
bread  and  soup  in  the  Children's  House,  does  not 
wholly  satisfy  Margherita  to-day.  Her  big  brown 
eyes  are  raised  continually  to  her  first  written 
word. 

Luncheon  over,  the  children,  with  balls,  hoops, 
and  toys,  romp  out  for  an  hour's  play  in  the 
garden. 


MONTESSORI    ENVIRONMENT      21 

"  Margherita,"  Bruno  calls.  "  Come,  we  will 
have  The  Little  One  for  a  donkey,  and  I 
will  harness  him  with  you,  who  may  be  the 
horse!" 

But  the  little  girl,  usually  the  first  to  start  a 
game,  does  not  hear.  She  is  seated  under  the 
rosebush  as  if  she  were  telling  her  rose  the  wonder 
that  has  come  to  her  to-day.  She  and  the  rose 
have  unfolded  together.  So  it  is  with  all  Mon- 
tessori  children.  They  open  their  souls  as  flowers 
do,  naturally,  freely,  surely. 

Margherita  is  your  child  as  well  as  the  precious 
bambino  of  her  Roman  mother.  Children  the 
world  over,  from  sun  to  sun,  from  pole  to  pole, 
are  the  same  in  these  plastic  first  years  of  mind 
growth.  They  have  the  same  insatiable  desire  to 
do,  to  touch,  to  be  free  in  activity.  Not  always 
understanding  the  little  child's  hereditary  way  of 
grasping  knowledge,  we  wound  his  spirit  by  crush- 
ing these  natural  instincts.  We  say,  "  don't 
touch"  "  be  still"  because  the  activities  of  our 
small  Margheritas  and  Brunos  interfere  with  our 
adult  standards  of  living. 

Dr.  Montessori  has  discovered  that  to  say, 
"  don't  touch"  "  be  still"  to  a  child  is  a  crime. 


22        MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

Such  commands  are  the  keen-edged  daggers  that 
kill  the  child  soul. 

It  is  possible  that  some  time  will  elapse  before 
Dr.  Montessori's  system  of  setting  the  clockwork 
of  the  little  child's  mind  running  automatically, 
of  opening  the  floodgates  of  the  child  soul  can  be 
adopted  in  their  entirety  in  our  American  school. 
We  are  so  used  to  thinking  of  a  school  as  a 
crowded  place  of  many  desks,  where  children  must 
remain,  bound  physically  and  mentally  by  the  will 
of  the  teacher  and  the  relentless  course  of  study, 
that  a  Montessori  schoolroom  where,  as  Dr.  Mon- 
tessori herself  expresses  it,  children  may  move 
about  usefully,  intelligently,  and  freely,  without 
committing  a  rough  or  rude  act,  seems  to  us  im- 
possible. We  even  prescribe  and  teach  imagina- 
tive plays  to  our  children — as  if  it  were  possible 
for  any  outside  force  to  mold  that  wonderful 
mind  force  by  means  of  which  the  mind  creates 
the  new  out  of  its  triumphant  conquest  of  the 
world  through  the  senses. 

Ideal  Montessori  schools  may  be  our  hope  of  to- 
morrow, but  to  make  of  a  home  a  Children's  House 
is  the  fact  of  to-day. 

To  bring  about  Montessori  development  in  the 


MONTESSORI    ENVIRONMENT      23 

home  is  not  alone  a  matter  of  buying  the  didactic 
materials  and  then  offering  them  to  your  Mar- 
gherita  and  looking  for  their  future  miracle  work- 
ing. This  would  mean  stimulating  lawlessness  in- 
stead of  freedom.  Many  of  our  children  already 
play  with  squares  and  circles  without  seeing  how 
squares  and  circles  make  beauty  in  the  architecture 
of  our  cities.  Many  of  our  children  grow  up  side 
by  side  with  opening  roses  without  unfolding 
with  them.  We  would  most  of  us  rather  button  on 
our  babies'  aprons,  tie  their  bibs,  feed  them,  than 
lead  them  into  the  physical  independence  that 
comes  from  doing  these  things  themselves.  We 
wish  children  to  be  obedient,  but  instead  of  estab- 
lishing principles  of  good  in  their  minds  which 
they  will  follow  freely,  if  we  only  give  them  a 
chance,  we  command,  and  expect  unreasoning  obe- 
dience to  our  injustice. 

A  Children's  House  in  every  home  will  be  a 
place  where  the  mother  is  imbued  with  the  spirit 
of  the  investigator.  She  watches  her  children,  ask- 
ing herself  why  they  act  along  certain  lines.  She 
leads  instead  of  ruling.  She  will  teach  her  chil- 
dren physical  independence  as  soon  as  they  can 
toddle.  To  know  how  to  dress  and  undress,  to 


24        MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

bathe,  to  look  quickly  over  a  room  to  see  if  it  is 
in  order,  to  open  and  close  doors  and  move  little 
chairs,  tables,  and  toys  quietly,  to  care  for  plants 
and  pets — these  are  simple  physical  exercises 
which  help  to  keep  children  free  and  good.  She 
will  provide  her  Children's  House  with  materials 
for  sense-training.  She  will  lead  her  children  by 
simple,  logical  steps  into  preparation  for  early 
mastery  of  reading  and  writing. 

The  first  step,  however,  in  giving  the  American 
child  a  chance  to  develop  along  the  self-active, 
natural  lines  of  Margherita  is  to  fill  our  homes 
with  the  spirit  of  Montessori.  We  will  have  un- 
limited patience  with  the  mistakes  and  idiosyncra- 
sies of  childhood,  remembering  that  we  do  not  aim 
to  develop  little  men  and  women  but  only  as  nearly 
perfect  children  as  we  can.  We  will  endeavor  to 
surround  ourselves  with  those  influences  of  love 
and  charity  and  beauty  and  simplicity  which  it 
will  be  good  for  our  children  to  feel  as  well.  We 
will  offer  the  children  the  best  food,  the  greatest 
amount  of  air,  the  brightest  sunshine,  the  least 
breakable  belongings,  the  most  encouragement,  the 
minimum  of  coercion. 

Our  attitude  toward  the  child  will  be  that  of 


MONTESSORI    ENVIRONMENT      25 

the  physician  to  whom  the  slightest  variation  of  a 
symptom  is  a  signal  for  a  change  of  treatment,  to 
whom  a  fraction  of  progress  measures  a  span.  A 
careful  home  record  of  the  child's  mental,  moral, 
and  physical  gain  should  be  kept,  and  it  will  be 
radiantly  discovered  that  the  removal  of  the  bur- 
den of  force  and  coercion  from  the  shoulders  of 
the  little  child  will  give  him  an  impetus,  not  only 
to  mind  growth,  but  to  the  attaining  of  greater 
bodily  strength. 

Much  misunderstanding  of  the  system  of  Mon- 
tessori  has  come  about  through  our  too  lavish  in- 
terpretation of  the  word  freedom  as  lawlessness. 
It  should  be  interpreted,  rather,  as  self -direction. 
The  home  in  which  the  children  are  provided  with 
good  living  conditions,  in  which  it  is  made  possi- 
ble for  them  to  grow  naturally,  where  their  long- 
ing to  see  and  touch  and  weigh  and  smell  and  taste 
is  satisfied  as  far  as  can  be  arranged,  and  where 
they  are  led  to  be  as  independent  of  adult  help 
as  possible,  is  laying  the  foundation  for  the  edu- 
cation of  Montessori. 


VALIA 

The  Physical  Education  of  the  System 

VALIA  was  her  mother's  little  stranger.  Al- 
though the  mother  had  borne  and  fondled  and 
bathed  and  clothed  and  undressed  the  pink  flesh 
that  held  the  baby  soul,  she  did  not  know  that 
flesh.  And  Valia  grew  to  be  three  years  old,  fat 
and  good,  but  with  little  bent  limbs  and  a  tired- 
out  spine  and  clumsy,  fumbling  fingers. 

"  Sit  in  your  chair,  Valia.  That  is  what  chairs 
are  made  for,"  Valia's  mother  admonished  at  home 
when  the  baby  joyfully  pranced  across  the  floor 
on  "  all  fours  "  or  lay  prone  at  play  with  her 
toys. 

"Walk  in  the  garden  path  like  a  little  lady," 
she  urged,  when  Valia,  taken  out  for  a  walk, 
climbed  to  the  lowest  railing  of  an  adjacent  fence 
and  walked  along  it,  sideways,  or  hung  from  the 
top,  her  fat  legs  swinging  in  the  air. 

"  Do  not  jump;  to  jump  is  noisy  and  unbecom- 


PHYSICAL    EDUCATION  27 

ing  in  little  girls,"  the  mother  commanded,  as 
Valia,  brought  to  the  Trionfale  Children's  House 
in  Rome,  hopped  gayly  up  and  down  the  wide 
stone  steps. 

But  the  directress  of  the  school  had  no  word 
of  reproof  for  baby  Valia.  She  looked  at  the  bent 
legs  that  could  hardly  hold  the  weight  of  the 
plump  body,  she  glanced  at  the  powerless  baby 
hands  that  could  not  clutch  with  any  force  the 
handles  of  a  toy  wheelbarrow  which  another  child 
offered  Valia  for  her  play. 

"  You  have  not  noticed  the  baby's  limbs,"  the 
directress  suggested. 

The  mother's  eyes  trailed  the  school  yard  where 
Valia  struggled  to  keep  up  with  the  other  sturdy 
little  men  and  women  who  trundled  their  toy  wheel- 
barrows up  and  down  in  long  happy  lines.  She 
shrugged  her  shoulders. 

"  Perhaps  they  are  crooked,  but  what  can  one 
do  to  the  body  of  a  bambino  but  feed  and  cover 
it?"  she  asked  in  discouraged  query. 

"  Ah,  La  Dottoressa  tells  us,"  the  directress  re- 
plied simply. 

"We  can  know  the  body  of  the  little 
child." 


28        MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

The  education  of  Valia's  muscles  was  begun  that 
very  day,  that  instant. 

In  the  school  garden  the  little  maid  found  her 
way  with  the  other  children  to  an  immediately 
fascinating  bit  of  gymnastic  apparatus ;  a  section 
of  a  low  fence  it  looked,  its  posts  sunk  deeply  into 
the  ground  so  as  to  make  it  strong  and  durable. 
It  was  the  right  height  for  small  arms  to  reach 
the  top  rail,  which  was  round,  smooth,  and  easily 
grasped  by  small  hands.  Here  Valia  hung,  her 
limbs  suspended  and  at  rest,  for  long  periods. 
Sometimes  she  pulled  her  body  up  so  that  her  waist 
was  level  with  the  upper  railing.  It  was  a  new 
game,  one  could  climb  a  fence  without  being  chided 
for  it.  Valia  did  not  know,  but  Dr.  Montessori 
did,  that  little  children  climb  fences,  pull  back 
when  we  lead  them,  and  try  to  draw  themselves 
up  by  clinging  to  furniture  because  they  need  this 
form  of  physical  exercise  to  bring  about  har- 
monious muscular  development.  Valia's  body  was 
developing  at  an  enormously  greater  rate  than  her 
limbs.  The  height  of  your  baby's  torso  at  one 
year  is  about  sixty-five  per  cent,  of  its  total 
stature,  at  two  years  is  sixty-three  per  cent.,  at 
three  years  is  sixty-two  per  cent.  But  the  limbs 


Back-yard    apparatus    for   the    physical   development   of 
children  is  valuable. 


PHYSICAL   EDUCATION  29 

of  the  baby,  ah,  these  develop  much  more  slowly. 
To  hang  from  the  top  railing  of  a  fence  straightens 
the  spine,  rests  the  short  limbs  by  removing  the 
weight  of  the  torso,  and  helps  the  hands  to  pre- 
hensive  grasping.  So  Dr.  Montessori  invented 
and  uses  this  bar  apparatus  with  the  children  at 
Rome  and  recommends  its  use  in  American  nurs- 
eries and  playrooms. 

The  next  Montessori  exercise  for  Valia  was  a 
simple,  rhythmic  one — walking  on  a  line  to  secure 
bodily  poise  and  limb  control. 

It  was  just  another  game  for  a  child,  full  of 
happy  surprise,  too,  for  she  never  knew  when  the 
sweet  notes  of  the  piano  in  the  big  rooms  of  the 
Children's  House  would  tinkle  out  their  call  to 
the  march.  But  when  the  pianist  played  a  tune 
that  was  simple  and  repeated  its  melody  over  and 
over  again  and  was  marked  in  its  rhythm,  Valia 
and  Otello  and  Mario  and  all  the  other  babies  put 
away  their  work  and  fluttered  like  wind-blown 
butterflies  over  to  the  place  where  a  big  circle 
was  outlined  in  white  paint  on  the  floor.  To  march 
upon  this  line,  now  fast,  now  slowly,  sometimes 
with  the  lightness  of  a  fairy  and  then  with  the 
joyously  loud  tramp  of  a  work  horse,  oh,  how 


SO        MONTESSORI   CHILDREN 

delightful!  Sometimes  the  music  changed  to  the 
rhythm  of  running  or  a  folk-dance  step,  and  this 
gave  further  delight  to  the  little  ones. 

At  first,  Valia  could  not  find  the  white  circle 
of  delight.  Her  fat  feet  refused  to  obey  the  im- 
pulse of  her  eagerly  musical  soul.  But  with  the 
days  she  found  poise  and  grace  and  erectness  and 
the  crooked  limbs  began  to  straighten  themselves. 

She  sat,  for  hours  at  a  time,  in  a  patch  of 
sunlight  on  the  floor,  using  her  incompetent  little 
fingers  in  some  of  the  practical  exercises  of  every- 
day living.  The  directress  gave  her  a  stout 
wooden  frame,  to  which  were  fastened  two  soft 
pieces  of  gay  woolen  stuff,  one  of  which  was 
pierced  with  buttonholes  and  the  other  having 
large  bone  buttons.  Valia  worked  all  one  morning 
before  she  was  able  to  fit  each  button  in  its  cor- 
responding buttonhole,  but  when  she  did  accom- 
plish this,  the  triumph  was  a  bit  of  wonder-work- 
ing in  Valia's  control  of  herself.  It  started  her 
on  the  road  to  physical  freedom. 

Happy  in  her  new  accomplishment,  she  mastered 
all  the  other  dressing  frames ;  the  soft  linen  with 
pearl  buttons  that  was  like  her  underlinen,  the 
leather  through  which  one  thrust  shoe  buttons 


An   important  physical  exercise  of   Montessori. 


PHYSICAL    EDUCATION  31 

with  one's  own  button  hook,  or  laced  from  one  eye- 
let to  another,  the  lacing  on  cloth  like  her  mother's 
Sunday  bodice  of  green  velvet,  the  frames  of  linen 
with  large  and  small  hooks  and  eyes,  the  frame 
upon  which  were  broad  strands  of  bright-colored 
ribbon  to  be  tied  in  a  row  of  smart  little  bows. 

Daily,  simple  physical  exercises  such  as  these; 
hand  and  eye  co-ordination,  exercises  in  poise, 
stretching,  rest  for  the  limbs  and  freedom  for  the 
spine  and  torso  slowly  transformed  Valia  from  a 
lump  of  disorganized,  putty-like  flesh  to  an  erect, 
graceful,  self-controlled  little  woman. 

"  What  have  you  done  to  my  Valia  ?  "  asked  the 
mother  as  she  waited  at  the  school  door  for  her 
little  one  a  few  months  later.  "  She  dresses  the 
young  bambino  at  home  and  buttons  her  own 
shoes.  She  no  longer  stumbles  all  day  long  but 
stands  well  on  her  feet.  She  helps  me  to  lay  the 
evening  meal  and  carries  a  dish  of  soup,  full,  to 
the  place  of  her  father.  I  do  not  understand  it. 
Did  you  punish  her  for  climbing  and  being 
clumsy  ?  " 

"  No."  The  directress  of  the  Children's  House 
lays  a  kind  hand  on  Valia's  curly  head  as  she 
explains.  "  We  did  not  punish  Valia.  We  gave 


32        MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

her  a  fence  upon  which  to  climb  and  we  let  her 
tumble  about  on  the  floor  when  she  was  tired,  and 
we  helped  her  to  find  her  feet  and  her  fingers." 

Dr.  Montessori  tells  us  that  there  is  a  little 
Valia  in  every  home.  The  child  from  one  to  three 
and  four  years  of  age  is  in  need  of  definite  physical 
exercises  that  will  tend  to  the  normal  development 
of  physiological  movements.  We  ordinarily  give 
the  little  child's  body  slight  thought.  Then,  in 
the  schools,  we  gather  older  children  into  large 
classes,  and  by  a  series  of  collective  gymnastics 
in  which  the  commands  of  the  teacher  check  all 
spontaneity,  we  try  to  secure  poise  and  self-control 
and  grace  for  the  child  body. 

Gymnastics  for  the  home  will  accomplish  this 
result,  Dr.  Montessori  tells  us,  and  these  include 
simple  exercises  such  as  one  sees  in  the  Children's 
Houses.  They  are  planned  taking  into  account 
the  biology  of  the  body  of  the  child  from  birth  to 
six  years  of  age — the  child  who  has  a  torso  greatly 
developed  in  comparison  with  his  lower  limbs. 
They  have  for  their  basis  these  goals : 

Helping  the  child  to  limb  development  and  con- 
trol. 


Hand   and  eye  work  in  connection   in  exercises 
of  practical  life. 


PHYSICAL    EDUCATION  33 

Helping   the    child    to    proper   breathing    and 

articulate  speech. 
Helping  the  child  to  achieving  the  practical  acts 

of   life;   dressing,  carrying   objects   without 

dropping,  and  the  resulting  co-ordination  of 

hand  and  eye. 

To  bring  about  this  physical  development,  Dr. 
Montessori  has  planned  and  put  into  the  Chil- 
dren's Houses  in  Rome  certain  very  simple  physi- 
cal exercises,  so  simple  as  to  seem  to  us  almost 
obvious,  but  the  results  in  child  poise,  control,  and 
grace  have  drawn  the  attention  of  the  entire 
world.  These  exercises  include: 

Swinging  and  "  chinning "  on  a  play  fence, 
modeled  after  a  real  fence  or  gate. 

Climbing  and  jumping  from  broad  steps,  a  flight 
of  wooden  steps  being  built  for  the  purpose. 
Ascending  and  descending  a  short  flight  of 
circular  steps,  these  steps  built  for  the  ex- 
ercise at  slight  expense.  Climbing  up  and 
down  a  very  short  ladder.  Stepping  through 
the  rungs  of  the  ladder  as  it  is  laid  upon  the 
ground  or  the  floor. 


34        MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

Rhythmic  exercises  carried  out  upon  a  line; 
walking  slowly  or  fast,  softly  and  heavily, 
on  tiptoe,  running,  skipping,  and  dancing  in 
time  to  music.  These  exercises  may  be  done 
by  utilizing  the  long,  straight  cracks  in  a 
hardwood  floor,  the  seams  in  a  carpet,  by 
strewing  grain  or  making  a  snow  line  out  of 
doors. 

Exercises  in  practical  life,  the  most  important 
of  these  being  brought  about  by  the  use  of 
the  dressing  frames  included  in  the  Mon- 
tessori  didactic  materials,  and  including :  but- 
toning on  scarlet  flannel,  linen,  and  leather, 
lacing  on  cloth  and  leather,  fastening  hooks 
and  eyes  and  patent  snaps,  and  tying  bow- 
knots.  Other  materials  used  in  these  exer- 
cises are :  brooms  and  fascinating  little  scrub- 
bing brushes  and  white  enamel  basins  with 
which  the  children  help  to  make  the  school- 
room tidy  in  the  morning.  And  the  children 
are  taught  to  open  and  close  doors  and  gates 
softly  and  gracefully  and  to  greet  their 
friends  politely  and  with  courtesy. 

Physical  training  brought  about  through  play 
with  a  few  toys  that  stimulate  healthful  mus- 


Walking   upon   a   line   gives   poise  and   muscular 
control. 


PHYSICAL    EDUCATION  35 

cular  exercises  and  deep  breathing.  These 
toys  include  rather  heavy  toy  wheelbarrows, 
balls,  hoops,  bean  bags,  and  kites. 

Breathing  exercises.  For  these,  Dr.  Montessori 
recommends  the  march,  in  which  the  little 
ones  sing  in  time  to  the  rhythmic  movement 
of  their  feet,  an  exercise  in  which  deep 
breathing  brings  about  lung  strength.  She 
recommends  also  the  singing  circle  games  of 
Froebel.  She  leads  the  children  to  practice 
such  simple  respiratory  exercises  as,  hands 
on  hips,  tongue  lying  flat  in  the  mouth  and 
the  mouth  open,  to  draw  the  breath  in  deeply 
with  a  quick  lowering  of  the  shoulders,  after 
which  it  is  slowly  expelled,  the  shoulders  re- 
turning slowly  to  their  normal  position. 

Exercises  for  practice  in  enunciation,  including 
careful  phonic  pronunciation  of  the  sounds  of 
the  vowels  and  consonants  and  the  first  sylla- 
bles of  words.  This  practice  in  the  co-ordina- 
tion of  lips,  tongue,  and  teeth  not  only  helps 
the  child  to  clear  speech  but  leads  to  a 
quicker  grasp  of  reading. 

Each  of  these  physical  exercises  has  its  basis  in 
child  interest.  Your  toddler  instinctively  pulls 


36        MONTESSORI   CHILDREN 

and  climbs,  stretches,  and  scrambles  about  on  the 
floor,  longs  to  dress  his  own  fascinating,  wee  body, 
and  play  into  the  activities  of  the  home.  He 
loves  marked,  rhythmic  music  and  longs  to  hear 
those  jingles  and  nonsense  ditties  of  childhood's 
literature  in  which  syllabic  sounds  are  emphasized 
and  repeat  themselves. 

66  Not  commands,  but  freedom ;  not  teaching,  but 
observation,"  Dr.  Montessori  begs  of  mothers. 
So  she  has  taken  these  instinctive  activities  of  the 
little  child  and,  using  them  as  a  basis,  she  has 
built  upon  them  her  system  of  physical  training 
for  the  baby,  a  system  that  needs  no  bidding, 
"  Do  this,"  because  all  children  love  to  climb 
fences  and  play  with  buttons  and  stretch  little 
limbs  on  the  floor,  and  keep  time  to  rhythmic  music. 

Every  Thursday  morning  a  crowd  of  thirty  or 
forty  eager  tourists  from  all  over  !:he  world  wait 
with  impatience  to  be  admitted  to  the  Montessori 
school  on  the  Via  Giusti,  Rome.  Silently,  led  by 
a  white-robed  sister,  they  enter  the  schoolroom 
and  seat  themselves  in  quiet  expectant  rows  to 
watch  the  miracle  of  Montessori  physical  freedom. 
A  hush,  a  tinkle  of  child  laughter,  and  the  babies 
flock  in  from  the  garden.  Noiselessly,  gracefully, 


The  kind   of  toy  Dr.   Montessori   recommends  for 
physical  development. 


PHYSICAL    EDUCATION  37 

with  no  rude  jostling  or  crowding — and  alone — 
they  greet  each  visitor  with  outstretched  hands. 
Then,  like  a  bevy  of  little  men  and  women,  eager 
to  work,  eager  to  achieve,  they  hasten  to  the  cab- 
inets that  hold  the  didactic  materials,  to  choose 
their  material  for  the  day.  Nothing  drops,  noth- 
ing is  broken,  no  child  hurts  his  neighbor  in  his 
haste,  and  they  find  their  places,  some  stretched 
out  on  the  floor,  some  seated  at  the  white  tables. 
When  the  hour  for  the  midday  meal  comes,  the 
materials  are  as  carefully  put  back  in  their  places 
in  the  cabinet  and  the  little  ones  lay  the  tables 
for  luncheon.  To  see  a  child  balance  a  tray  that 
holds  five  filled  tumblers,  to  see  another  child 
bring  in  a  huge  bowl  of  warm  soup  and  serve  it 
with  no  mishaps,  these  interest  curious  sightseers 
as  much  as  the  Roman  Colosseum  or  the  Roman 
baths. 

But  isn't,  after  all,  the  child  who  has  come,  by 
natural  steps,  to  this  control  of  his  mind  and  body 
the  normal  child?  Are  not  our  children,  whom  we 
feed  and  dress  and  lead  and  fasten  into  high 
chairs,  the  abnormal  ones?  It  is  vastly  easier  to 
lace  a  child's  shoes,  to  hold  his  hand  when  he 
goes  up  and  down  steps,  to  fetch  and  carry  for 


38        MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

him,  than  to  teach  him  this  muscular  co-ordina- 
tion, but  it  is  just  this  careful  teaching  of  the 
simple  things  of  life  that  makes  the  Montessori 
child  a  sight  for  tourists. 

"  What  makes  these  children  so  good?  "  I  heard 
a  visitor  ask  her  neighbor  one  morning  as  she 
watched  the  Via  Giusti  little  ones. 

A  number  of  factors  contribute  to  the  goodness 
of  the  Montessori  child,  but  one  of  the  most  im- 
portant of  these  is  that  he  "  knows  himself."  He 
knows  his  body,  what  it  can  do  and  what  it  must 
not  do.  This  physical  freedom  leads  naturally 
and  surely  to  freedom  of  the  spirit. 


THE  FREEING  OF  OTELLO,  THE 
TERRIBLE 

Monte ssori  Awakening  of  Conscience  Through 
Directed  Will 

HE  was  so  wee  a  bambino  to  have  absorbed  so 
much  brutality  in  his  heart.  Not  quite  three  sum- 
mers and  winters  old  was  Otello  when  his  mother 
pushed  him  across  the  threshold  of  the  big,  cool, 
white  room  of  the  Trionfale  Public  School  at  Rome 
that  houses  a  Montessori  Children's  House.  There 
she  left  him  after  a  volley  of  guttural  speech  that 
told  the  little  dark-eyed  girl  directress  how  un- 
controlled and  passionate  was  this  baby  of  Rome, 
a  quaint  little  "  man  "  in  stuff  dress  and  bare 
legs  and  torn  shoes  who  looked  with  stolid  wonder 
into  the  happy  eyes  of  the  other  babies. 

At  first  it  seemed  as  if  the  mother  were  right. 
In  an  awed  whisper  to  Dr.  Montessori  the  girl 
directress  spoke  of  Otello  as  "  the  terrible."  He 
met  love  with  apparent  hate,  kindness  with  malevo- 
lence, sociability  with  taciturn  aloofness.  Did 

39 


40        MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

little  Mario  with  painstaking  effort  lay  a  carpet 
of  beautifully  tinted  color  spools  in  careful  order 
on  his  table ;  then  Otello  swooped  down  from  his 
watchful  corner  and  with  one  sweep  of  his  fat 
hand  wrought  confusion  in  the  beauty.  Did  a 
stone  lie,  harmless,  in  the  school  garden ;  Otello 
found  it  and  used  it  with  dire  results.  Did  Valia, 
the  toddler,  with  much  toil  fill  her  small  wheel- 
barrow with  a  precious  load  of  sticks  ready  to 
trundle  it  across  the  playground ;  Otello  inter- 
vened, overturned  the  barrow,  and  gloated  over 
Valia's  tears. 

From  his  first  day  he  showed  an  amazing  in- 
ventiveness along  lines  of  disorder.  To  tear  a 
finished  picture  that  his  little  girl  neighbor  had 
zealously  colored,  to  swoop  down  upon  the  heights 
of  the  pink  tower  whose  perfect  building  some 
other  baby  had  just  achieved  in  a  patch  of  sun- 
light on  the  floor  and  overturn  it — these  seemed 
to  be  Otello's  most  joyful  triumphs.  And  al- 
ways, as  he  planned  some  act  of  disorder,  he 
looked  up,  expectantly,  for  the  blow,  the  harsh 
command  with  which  the  misdirected  force  of  child- 
hood is  so  often  met  by  the  brute  force  of  the 
adult. 


AWAKENING    OF    CONSCIENCE  41 

But  these  never  came.  Instead,  he  saw  a  group 
of  sympathetic  little  ones  run  softly  across  the 
wide  spaces  of  the  room  to  help  Mario  in  rear- 
ranging his  color  spools.  There  was  no  thought 
of  him,  Otello  the  law  breaker,  but  only  the  love 
of  Mario  in  their  hearts.  In  place  of  the  reproof 
that  he  almost  longed  for3  that  he  might  meet  it 
with  rebellion,  he  felt  the  touch  of  warm  lips  on 
his  forehead,  and  he  heard  the  soft  voice  of  the 
directress : 

"  Ah,  Otello,  that  was  wrong.''9 

There  was  no  other  word  of  blame,  no  com- 
mand, you  must  not,  for  him  to  meet  with  his 
marvelous  strength  of  will  and,  /  shall.  He  might 
choose  the  thing  that  was  wrong — or — 

It  was  one  sweet  spring  morning  in  Italy  that  I 
saw  the  miracle  happen  to  Otello,  a  morning  when 
the  free  breezes  from  the  Roman  hills  brought 
heavy  odors  of  grape  and  orange  blooms  and  the 
birds  sang  their  freedom  outside  the  windows  of 
the  Trionfale  Children's  House.  Otello  sat  in  a 
little  white  chair  in  front  of  a  little  white  table, 
suddenly  quiet  and  thinking.  He  saw,  all  about 
him,  other  little  white  chairs  and  low  white  tables. 
If  he  wished  he  might  choose  another  chair;  no 


42         MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

one  would  insist  that  he  stay  in  one  seat.  The 
brown  linen  curtains  at  the  windows  rustled  pleas- 
antly with  the  perfume-laden  wind.  If  Otello 
wished  he  might  go  out  in  the  playground  for  a 
breath  of  that  wind.  No  one  would  prevent  him. 
In  front  of  him  he  saw  another  large  room  with 
a  piano  and  low  white  cabinets  filled  with  fas- 
cinating Montessori  materials,  and  colored  rugs 
for  spreading  on  the  stone  floor,  and  many  babies, 
of  his  own  kind,  sitting  there  busily  at  work.  A 
child  might  dash  over  and  spoil  the  work  of  a 
dozen  children  at  one  attack.  Or  a  child  might  do 
a  little  experimenting  himself  with  these  materials 
that  so  engrossed  the  others.  Otello  chose  the 
latter  course,  and  going  to  one  of  the  cabinets, 
he  selected  one  of  the  solid  insets,  a  long  polished 
wood  frame,  into  which  fit  ten  fascinatingly  smooth 
cylinders  of  varying  diameters.  Holding  the 
cylinders  by  their  shining  brass  knobs,  he  put  them 
in  their  proper  places  in  the  frame,  took  them  out, 
put  them  in  again  a  dozen,  a  score  of  times.  Un- 
consciously he  was  training  his  sense  of  touch, 
but  more  than  this,  he  was  exercising  his  con- 
science in  a  new  way.  A  small  cylinder  refused  to 
fit  in  a  large  hole  in  the  frame;  a  large  cylinder 


AWAKENING    OF    CONSCIENCE    43 

could  not  be  forced,  no  matter  how  strenuously 
he  hammered  it  with  his  little  clenched  fist,  into  a 
small  hole.  Before  Otello  put  each  cylinder  in  its 
proper  place,  he  tested  it  with  a  larger  or  smaller 
hole. 

"  Wrong !  "  he  whispered  to  himself  in  the  first 
instance ;  and, 

"  Right!  "  he  ejaculated  when  the  good,  smooth 
little  piece  of  wood  dropped  out  of  sight  in  its 
own  hole. 

After  almost  three-quarters  of  an  hour  of  this 
will  training,  for  the  little  child  who  persists  in 
a  piece  of  work  and  completes  it  is  taking  the  first 
steps  toward  properly  directed  mil,  Otello  looked 
up  from  his  work.  Mario,  his  neighbor,  bent  over 
the  color  spools  again.  From  the  pocket  of 
Mario's  apron  protruded  one  of  the  crown  jewels 
of  childhood — a  big  glass  marble.  Otello  had  no 
marble.  With  all  the  longing  of  his  heart  he  had 
wanted  one.  Mario  bent  lower  over  his  color 
matching  and  the  shining  glass  sphere,  as  if  it 
were  alive,  slipped  from  his  pocket,  dropped  to  the 
floor,  and  rolled  across  to  Otello. 

With  quick  stealthiness  Otello  grasped  it  in  his 
eager  little  fingers.  It  was  his  marble  now;  no 


44        MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

one  had  seen  him  take  it ;  in  his  little  brown  palm 
it  held  and  scintillated  a  hundred  colors.  How 
happy  it  made  him  to  own  it ;  he  would  slip  it  into 
the  hole  in  his  shoe  to  keep  it  safe  until  he  reached 
home!  But,  even  as  he  made  a  hurried  movement 
to  hide  his  booty,  his  prisoned  soul  burst  its 
cocoon.  With  one  of  the  rare  smiles  in  his  eyes 
that  one  sees  in  the  undying  children  of  Raphael, 
Otello  ran  over  to  Mario  and  dropped  the  marble 
in  his  lap. 

Otello  had  taught  himself  the  right  and  he  had 
made  the  right  his  happy  choice. 

The  old  way  of  helping  Otello,  of  helping  your 
child  to  right  action  and  self-education,  was  to 
command.  Yesterday,  we  said: 

"  You  must  do  this  because  I  tell  you  to ;  this 
is  right  because  I  say  that  it  is." 

Dr.  Montessori  gives  us  a  new,  a  better  way 
of  educating  little  children.  Before  we  present 
her  didactic  materials  to  a  child,  before — even — 
he  leaves  his  cradle  and  his  mother's  arms,  we 
will  give  the  child  his  birthright  of  freedom ;  phys- 
ical freedom,  mental  freedom,  moral  freedom.  The 
place  of  the  mother  in  education,  Dr.  Montessori 
tells  us,  is  that  of  the  "  watcher  on  the  mountain 


AWAKENING    OF    CONSCIENCE    45 

top."  She  observes  every  action  of  the  child,  helps 
him  to  see  the  difference  between  right  and  wrong, 
but  she  leaves  him  free,  that  he  may  train  his  own 
will,  make  his  own  choice,  educate  himself. 

How  can  we  help  our  children  to  the  goodness 
that  little  Otello  has  found?  What  had  he  missed 
at  home  that  was  supplied  to  him  in  the  Chil- 
dren's House? 

The  root  that  is  denied  space  by  its  earth 
mother  to  stretch  and  pull  and  reach  does  not 
grow  into  a  tall,  straight  tree.  The  bud,  shut  off 
from  its  birthright  of  sunshine  and  moisture,  does 
not  unfold  into  perfect  flowering.  The  child  who 
is  choked  at  home  by  an  artificial  environment  and 
chained  by  the  commands  of  his  parents  will  de- 
velop into  a  crooked,  blasted  man.  Dr.  Montessori 
told  me  that  her  first  word  to  American  mothers 
is  this: — 

"  Free  your  children." 

Every  child  is  born  with  an  unlimited  capacity 
for  good.  His  impulse  is  to  do  the  good  thing, 
but  we  so  hedge  him  about  with  objects  which  he 
must  not  touch  and  places  which  he  must  not  ex- 
plore and  inaccuracies  of  speech  which  confuse  his 
understanding,  that  he  rebels.  With  the  force  of 


46        MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

a  giant,  the  baby  uses  his  will  to  break  our  will. 
This  is  right;  he  was  born  as  free  as  air,  and  we 
act  as  his  jailers.  Presently,  his  thwarted  will 
finds  other  outlets,  and  we  are  confronted  with  a 
little  Otello. 

We  have  thought  that  to  "  break  "  a  child's  will 
was  the  first  step  toward  giving  him  self-control. 
We  say  to  a  child : 

"  Don't  be  capricious  !  " 

"  Don't  tell  lies !  " 

He  is  capricious  because  we  have  so  often  in- 
terfered with  his  normal  child  activities,  because 
they  made  him  dirty,  perhaps,  or  caused  a  litter 
that  we  thought  disorderly.  He  lies  because  we 
have  not  explained  his  world  to  him,  or  because  he 
fears  us.  Seldom  is  a  child  capricious  or  un- 
truthful unless  we  have  made  him  so. 

The  Montessori  directress  at  the  Trionfale  Chil- 
dren's House,  first  of  all,  patiently  observed  Otello. 
At  the  end  of  a  week's  time  she  knew  more  about 
him  than  his  mother  did,  for  she  had  recorded  his 
height,  weight,  chest,  and  cranial  development  and 
had  discovered  that  he  needed  physical  exercise  to 
help  his  mental  development.  We  will  watch  our 
children's  bodily  growth  more  carefully  than  we 


AWAKENING    OF    CONSCIENCE    47 

have  in  the  past  if  we  are  to  be  Montessori  mothers. 

She  never  commanded  the  little  fellow  whose 
ears  were  so  deafened  with  the  many  commands  of 
his  mother  that  he  found  it  a  psychological  im- 
possibility to  obey.  Instead  she  had  faith  that  his 
new  environment,  her  careful  pointing  out  of  right 
and  wrong,  and  the  ordered  activities  brought 
about  by  the  Montessori  didactic  materials  would 
loose  his  spirit,  which  had  been  like  a  butterfly 
stabbed  by  the  pin  of  a  scientist. 

So  we  will  be  patient  with  our  babies  and  watch 
them  and  wait  expectantly  for  the  unfolding  of 
their  minds  and  souls  which  will  surely  come  if 
we  supply  the  opportunity. 

Dr.  Montessori  gives  us  a  new  word  for  the 
home  and  she  blots  out  an  old  one. 

"Why?"  is  our  new  word.  We  will  observe 
the  minutest  activity  of  the  home  child  from  its 
first  month  to  the  time  when  it  leaves  the  home  for 
school,  asking  ourselves  the  reason  for  each  ac- 
tivity. 

"  Don't !  "  is  our  blotted-out  word.  No  activity 
of  a  child  should  be  inhibited  unless  it  is  morally 
wrong. 

From  babyhood  to  the  age  of  six  years  almost 


48         MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

every  free  movement,  every  free  thought  of  the 
child  has  a  meaning  in  relation  to  its  bodily  and 
mental  growth.  If  we  suffocate  children's  activi- 
ties, we  suffocate  their  lives.  The  good  child  is 
not  the  quiet,  inactive  child.  The  perfect  child 
is  not  the  child  who  is  nearest  like  man. 

The  only  way  to  keep  a  child  still  is  to  teach 
him  orderly  movement.  The  only  way  to  keep  him 
from  handling  our  things  is  to  give  him  educa- 
tional things  of  his  own  to  handle. 

It  is  a  more  fascinating  home  occupation  than 
any  which  you  ever  attempted,  this  Montessori 
way  of  observing  your  child.  He  is  your  own 
life  flower,  a  bud,  now,  but  with  the  power  of  sure, 
beautiful  unfolding  into  bloom.  Your  part  is  to 
watch  the  process  of  this  unfolding,  and  to  sur- 
round the  child  plant  with  light  and  nourishment 
and  freedom  for  growth. 

You  thoughtlessly  say,  "  Don't  sit  on  the  floor 
and  play ;  you  will  soil  your  clothes." 

"Walk  faster  and  keep  up %  with  my  footsteps 
or  I  will  not  take  you  out  with  me  to-morrow." 

Dr.  Montessori  tells  us  that  the  limbs  of  the 
little  child  are  very  short  in  comparison  with  his 
torso  and  tire  quickly  from  holding  up  his  body 


AWAKENING    OF    CONSCIENCE       49 

weight.  If  his  legs  are  to  grow  straight  and 
strong  he  must  follow  his  own  inclination  and  sit 
and  lie  on  the  floor  when  he  plays;  he  must  not 
be  required  to  keep  up  with  our  longer  stride  in 
walking.  We  were  thoughtless  when  we  com- 
manded don't.  Dr.  Montessori  shows  us  the  why. 
These  actions  of  the  child  were  wrong  only  from 
our  standpoint.  We  have  to  cleanse  soiled  clothes ; 
we  think  that  we  have  no  time  to  walk  slowly. 
But  in  the  Children's  Houses  no  child  is  ever  re- 
quired to  stay  in  his  small  white  chair  or  to  keep 
his  work  on  his  low  table.  He  is  free  to  work  on 
the  floor  in  any  position  which  makes  him  phys- 
ically comfortable  and  soft  rugs  are  provided  for 
this  purpose.  No  Montessori  child  is  commanded 
to  stay  in  line  and  "  keep  up  "  when  the  piano 
gives  the  signal  for  a  march  or  one  of  the  gay 
Italian  dance  steps.  Otello  and  Mario  and  Pic- 
cola,  the  babies,  drop  out  for  a  few  seconds,  seat- 
ing themselves  for  a  space  of  rest,  and  when  their 
fat  legs  are  ready  for  more  muscular  exertion, 
they  again  join  the  other  children. 

But  this  freedom  will  make  my  child  fickle,  lack- 
ing in  concentration,  you  say. 

On  the  contrary,  it  leads  to  concentration.    The 


50        MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

Montessori-trained  child  who  has  never  been  pre- 
vented from  doing  a  thing  unless  it  was  wrong 
and  who  has  been  allowed  to  carry  on  any  activity 
which  it  chooses;  free  play  with  outdoor  toys, 
the  Montessori  physical  exercises,  sense-training, 
drawing,  suddenly  arrives,  at  five  or  six  years  at 
a  most  unusual  amount  of  concentration.  From 
a  free  choice  of  occupations  that  lead  to  the  ex- 
ercise of  the  muscles  and  the  senses,  the  minds 
of  these  little  children  order  themselves,  and  the 
children  are  able  to  concentrate  on  one  line  of 
thought  for  long  periods. 

In  the  Children's  House  of  one  of  the  Model 
Tenements  in  Rome,  I  saw  a  little  girl  come  quietly 
in  at  nine  o'clock,  button  on  her  apron,  and  seat 
herself  with  a  book.  She  read,  happily,  for  three- 
quarters  of  an  hour,  hardly  lifting  her  eyes  from 
the  pages,  although  twenty-five  other  little  ones 
were  carrying  on  almost  as  many  different  occu- 
pations all  about  her.  At  the  end  of  this  time,  she 
closed  her  book,  crossed  to  the  blackboard,  looked 
out  of  the  window  a  moment,  and  wrote  in  a  clear 
hand  the  following  childish  idyl  to  the  day : 

"  The  sun  shines,"  it  began.  "  I  smell  the 
orange  flowers  and  the  sky  is  blue  and  I  hear  birds 


AWAKENING    OF    CONSCIENCE       51 

singing.  I  am  happy  because  it  is  a  pleasant  day." 
Do  we  find  such  concentration  in  our  children 
whom  we  teach  according  to  rule  and  in  masses? 
We  have  thought  that  to  educate  was  to  formulate 
a  great  many  rules  and  make  our  little  ones  follow 
them,  but  our  new  Montessori  ideal  is  a  very  dif- 
ferent matter — that  of  leaving  Life  free  to  de- 
velop and  to  unfold. 

The  American  child  has  the  strongest  will,  his 
gift  from  a  vital  heredity,  of  any  child  in  the 
world.  His  father  and  his  mother  have,  also, 
this  splendidly  forceful  inherited  will.  Parent  and 
child  tilt  and  bout  in  a  daily  fight,  and  if  the  parent 
comes  out  triumphant  and  succeeds  in  breaking 
the  child's  will  there  is  a  deadly  wrong  done.  That 
is  why  our  reform  schools  and  prisons  are  so  full 
of  strong  wills,  beyond  bending. 

We  must  let  our  little  ones  blaze  their  own 
trails,  provided,  of  course,  that  they  are  trails 
which  lead  in  the  right  direction.  We  must,  also, 
let  them  make  their  own  decisions,  and  if  occa- 
sionally they  prove  to  have  been  wrong,  the  ex- 
perience will  have  helped  them  to  decide  wisely 
the  next  time.  We  will,  also,  put  into  their  hands 
the  self-corrective  didactic  apparatus  of  Mon- 


52        MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

tessori,  which  has  a  distinct  ethical  value  in  the 
training  of  the  human  will. 

Education  to  be  vivid  and  permanent  in  the 
child's  life  should  be  worked  out  along  lines  oT 
experience.  To  say  to  a  child,  "  Don't  do  that ; 
it  isn't  right,"  is  to  make  a  very  inadequate  ap- 
peal to  one,  only,  of  his  senses,  that  of  hearing. 
To  put  into  the  child's  hands  the  blocks  of  the 
Montessori  tower  so  carefully  graded  in  dimension 
that  it  takes  exquisite  differentiation  to  pile  them 
is  to  give  him  a  chance  to  learn  through  experi- 
ence the  difference  between  right  and  wrong  by 
means  of  three  senses.  He  hears  a  possible  direc- 
tion as  to  their  use,  he  touches  them,  he  sees  the 
perfectly  completed  tower.  In  like  manner  the 
broad  and  long  stair,  the  solid  and  geometric 
insets,  all  contribute  their  quota  to  the  sum  of 
the  child's  perfectly  directed  will  control. 

The  average  home  is  full  of  mediums  for  help- 
ing a  little  child  to  develop  along  lines  of  willed 
control.  To  concentrate  upon  a  bit  of  constructive 
play  until  it  is  finished,  to  learn  orderliness  in 
putting  away  playthings,  or  to  do  some  simple 
home  duty  that  will  be  carried  over  from  day  to 
day,  all  are  important  willed  activities.  To  do 


AWAKENING    OF    CONSCIENCE       53 

whatever  is  in  hand,  building  or  drawing  or  pick- 
ing up  toys,  or  bathing  or  caring  for  a  doll  or 
a  pet,  or  helping  mother  as  well  as  possible,  is, 
also,  very  vital  will-training. 

DF.  Montessori  helps  us  to  a  hopeful  outlook 
on  the  subject  of  child  will.  Our  Otellos  are  not, 
after  all,  terrible.  The  child  who  is  most  difficult 
to  manage  is,  with  Montessori  training,  the  child 
who  turns  out  to  be  best  able  to  manage  himself. 


THE  CHRIST  IN  BRUNO 

About  the  New  Spiritual  Sense 

WHEN  Bruno  was  a  little  fellow,  his  mother 
and  father  were  killed  in  the  Messina  earthquake. 

Because  he  was  one  of  so  many  left-behind 
babies,  he  was  quite  neglected,  and  he  grew  up 
to  four  years  as  a  weed  grows.  Sometimes  one 
madre  of  the  tenement  mothered  him,  sometimes 
not.  At  times  he  was  fed,  at  other  times  he 
starved.  Because  of  the  great  fear  that  came  to 
him  with  the  blinding  smoke  and  the  twisting  red 
river  of  molten  lava  and  the  death  cry  of  his  girl 
mother  that  day  of  the  earthquake,  Bruno's  mind 
seemed  a  bit  dulled.  He  was  often  confused  by 
the  commands  of  people  who  tried  to  take  care  of 
him  and  so  could  not  obey.  Then  they  would 
strike  him.  And  he  heard  very  vile  language 
spoken  and  he  saw  very  evil  things  done  during 
his  babyhood  in  the  tenement. 

When  Bruno  wandered  across  the  threshold  of 
the  Via  Giusti  Children's  House  in  Rome,  he 
54 


NEW    SPIRITUAL    SENSE          55 

seemed  like  a  little  alien  among  the  other  happy 
little  ones  who  were  so  carefully  watched  over,  so 
gently  led.  For  days  he  sat  in  silence,  his  great, 
frightened  blue  eyes  watching  to  help  him  dodge 
the  blow  that  he  expected  but  never  felt;  his  lips 
ready  to  imitate  the  vile  speech  that  he  had  known 
before,  but  which  he  never  heard  here.  His  timid 
fingers  fumbled  with  the  big  pink  and  blue  letters 
that  the  other  children  used  in  making  long  sen- 
tences on  the  floor;  they  tried  to  button,  to  lace, 
to  match  colors,  but  not  very  effectually.  It  was 
as  if  the  great  fear  of  his  babyhood  had  shadowed 
his  whole  mental  life  and  left  him  powerless. 

One  morning  Bruno's  dulled  blue  eyes  glimpsed 
an  unusual  stir  among  the  children.  A  new  little 
one  had  come  and,  full  of  disorderly  impulses, 
had  snatched  at  the  varicolored  carpet  of  care- 
fully arranged  color  spools  Piccola  had  placed 
on  her  table,  scattering  them  to  the  floor.  Red, 
green,  orange,  yellow,  Piccola's  painstaking  work 
of  an  hour  lay  in  a  great,  colored,  mixed-up  heap. 
Piccola's  eyes,  still  pools  that  reflected  all  the  hazel 
tints  of  fall  woods,  grew  blurred  with  tears.  She 
dropped  her  curly  head  in  her  arms  and  sobbed, 
big,  gulping  sobs  that  wouldn't  stop,  that  stran- 


56        MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

gled  her.  Bruno,  watching  her,  found  his  muscles. 
He  ran  to  her,  putting  one  kind  little  arm  around 
her  waist,  and  with  the  other  drew  her  head  down 
to  the  shoulder  of  his  little  ragged  blue  blouse 
and  smoothed  her  hair,  talking  sweet,  liquid  non- 
sense all  the  time  that  made  Piccola's  sobs  grow 
less  and  less,  and  comforted  her.  When  she  smiled 
and  drew  away  to  watch  the  group  of  children 
who  had  hurried  to  pick  up  her  colors  for  her, 
Bruno  slipped  back  to  his  corner  and  the  old, 
dull  look  settled  back  in  his  face. 

"  The  little  man  has  the  conscience  sense.  He 
shall  have  a  chance  to  use  it,"  thought  the  Mon- 
tessori  directress  who  had  been  watching  the  scene. 

And  because  she  wanted  his  soul  to  grow  strong, 
even  if  his  timid  fingers  couldn't,  she  often  stopped 
by  Bruno's  chair  to  hold  his  hand,  kindly,  for 
a  minute  in  hers,  or  just  bent  over  him,  smiling 
straight  down  into  his  face. 

"  No  one  will  hurt  this  little  man  of  ours.  He 
loves  us  and  we  love  him,"  she  assured  Bruno  over 
and  over,  until  one  day  her  patience  reaped  the 
prize  of  Bruno's  answering  smile  and  she  felt  his 
two  hungry  little  arms  clasping  her. 

She  strengthened  his  beginning  friendship  with 


NEW    SPIRITUAL    SENSE          57 

Piccola,  the  color-loving,  reckless,  daring  little 
maid,  whom  all  the  children  loved  to  love  and  loved 
to  fight.  When  Piccola  brought  an  unusual  treat 
in  her  luncheon  basket,  a  leaf-wrapped  packet  of 
dried  grapes  or  two  luscious  figs  instead  of  one, 
the  directress  suggested  that  she  share  with  Bruno, 
who  had  no  one  to  tuck  a  surprise  in  his  basket. 
As  the  two  child  faces  drew  close  above  the  feast 
and  the  little  hands  fluttered  together  over  this 
friendly  breaking  of  bread,  Bruno's  eyes  sparkled. 
He  was  reading  his  first  lines  in  the  primer  of 
love;  he  was  finding  his  sight.  And  in  return 
Bruno  helped  Piccola  to  rake  leaves  in  the  garden, 
he  unrolled  and  carefully  spread  upon  the  floor  the 
rug  upon  which  Piccola  wished  to  curl  herself  and 
sort  letters ;  he  hastened  to  add  his  strength  to 
hers  when  the  drawer  that  held  the  letters  stuck; 
he  fought  Piccola's  street  battles  for  her. 

Soon  Bruno's  loving  busy-ness  so  increased  that 
he  found  things  to  do  almost  every  second  of  his 
happy  days  in  the  Children's  House.  No  longer 
the  little  cowering,  cringing,  inactive  child  of  a 
few  weeks  past,  he  was  an  alert  little  man  whom 
I  instantly  watched,  because  his  activity  was  so 
unusual.  When  the  line  of  children,  two  by  two 


58        MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

and  clasping  hands,  in  their  pretty  custom  of  wel- 
coming visitors  to  the  Via  Giusti  Children's  House, 
tumbled  in  each  morning,  Bruno  always  headed 
the  line.  He  held  by  the  hand  the  smallest,  new- 
est, or  the  most  timid  child,  dragging  it  in  his 
eagerness  to  teach  it  to  shake  hands  and  say 
good-day.  He  would  "  hold  up  "  the  line  because 
he  had  so  much  to  say  in  his  welcome  to  the 
strangers  who  had  come  to  spend  the  morning  with 
the  little  ones. 

"  See  our  Signorina ;  is  she  not  kind? 

"This  is  our  room;  do  you  like  it? 

"  There  is  Margherita ;  she  writes! 

"  This  is  Piccola,  who  reads  !  " 

In  breathless  sentences,  Bruno's  heart  interest 
worded  itself.  Then,  as  the  others  settled  them- 
selves for  the  day's  work,  Bruno  began  his  day 
of  service.  He  was  the  Loving  One,  the  Helping 
One,  the  Comforting  One  of  the  Via  Giusti  Chil- 
dren's House.  Was  any  child  left  without  a  glass 
of  water  at  the  luncheon  hour,  Bruno  fetched  it. 
Did  the  little  girl  waitress  for  the  day  forget  to 
fill  a  soup  plate  from  her  tureen,  Bruno  re- 
minded her.  If  the  three-year-old  started  home 
with  his  cloak  unbuttoned,  Bruno,  feeling  in  his 


NEW    SPIRITUAL    SENSE          59 

tender  little  heart  the  chill  wind  of  the  Roman 
hills,  buttoned  the  cloak  for  the  baby.  If  a  tod- 
dler tumbled  down,  Bruno  picked  it  up  and  exam- 
ined it  for  bumps,  and  started  it  safely  on  its 
way  again.  He  fetched  and  carried,  watched  for 
chances  to  help,  to  champion  the  weak,  to  wipe 
away  anybody's  tears  with  the  hem  of  his 
apron. 

The  seat  he  most  often  chose  was  under  a  cast 
of  the  Madonna.  Sometimes  he  sat  quiet  for 
long  spaces,  looking  at  it.  "  Bruno  calls  the  Ma- 
donna his  madre,"  whispered  Piccola  one  day. 

"Who  is  that  big,  homely  child?"  asked  a 
visitor,  pointing  to  Bruno  putting  fresh  water  in 
a  bowl  of  roses  that  stood  under  the  cast.  "  Isn't 
he  older  than  the  other  children?  " 

"  Older — yes,  in  spirit,"  answered  the  far-seeing 
directress.  "  He  is  our  little  Christ-child." 

So  he  is  our  little  Christ-child.  Wherever  there 
is  a  child  in  a  home,  Dr.  Montessori  tells  us,  there 
Christ  is.  She  discovers  for  us  a  new  sense,  the 
"  conscience  sense,"  only  waiting  for  an  oppor- 
tunity to  exercise  itself  and,  in  the  exercising,  un- 
fold and  bloom  and  ripen  into  the  fruits  of  the 
spirit.  If  being  an  orphan  and  hungry  and  beaten 


60        MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

and  knowing  vile  things  couldn't  hurt  the  soul  of 
Bruno,  think  of  the  possibility  of  Christ  in  your 
baby. 

Children  grow,  mentally,  through  the  right  ex- 
ercise of  the  senses.  To  see  and  to  be  able  to  dis- 
tinguish between  beautiful  colors  and  beautiful 
forms ;  to  discriminate  between  sounds  that  are  dis- 
cordant and  sounds  that  are  harmonious ;  to  know 
rough  things  and  smooth  things,  round  things  and 
square  things,  velvet  things  and  linen  things,  by 
touching  them  with  the  finger  tips,  this  we  know 
is  a  starting  point  on  the  road  of  the  three  R's 
of  everyday  education.  Dr.  Montessori  guides  us 
a  lap  farther  in  the  new  education.  She  sees,  born 
with  every  child,  eyes  of  the  spirit  and  slender, 
groping  fingers  of  the  soul  that  look  and  reach 
for  the  good.  To  help  a  child  to  use  his  spirit 
eyes  and  his  soul  fingers  means  to  give  him  a  chance 
to  exercise  his  conscience.  It  is  a  new  sort  of 
sense-training  that  means  his  finding  the  three 
R's  of  the  life  of  the  spirit:  faith,  hope,  and 
charity. 

How  shall  we  help  a  child  to  exercise  and  train 
his  conscience  sense? 

Dr.  Montessori  tells  us  that  if  we  but  watch  a 


NEW    SPIRITUAL    SENSE          61 

little  child's  free,  spontaneous  use  of  his  soul  fin- 
gers, his  daily  loves  and  hopes  and  faith,  these  will 
shine  for  us  as  a  Bethlehem  star-path  leading  us 
to  the  manger-throne  of  a  King-in-the-making. 
As  we  are  turning  a  child's  tendency  to  handle  into 
mind-training,  we  will  turn  his  manifestations  of 
inner  sensibility  into  morality. 

It  is  quite  ineffectual  to  say  to  a  child: 

"  You  must  love  your  neighbor." 

Of  course  he  will  try  to  do  the  thing  that  we 
ask  of  him  because  he  is  a  very  kind  little  person, 
ready  to  put  up  with  the  inconsistencies  of  his 
elders  and  willing  to  try  to  obey ;  but  it  will  be  a 
makeshift  sort  of  love,  not  free  and  a  flowering  of 
the  child's  own  heart,  but  built  upon  what  we  tell 
him  about  love.  This  makes  of  children  little 
puppets. 

Dr.  Montessori  says :  "  Watch  how  children 
love  and  what  they  love." 

You  know  how  your  child  loves — with  the 
thoughtless  abandon  of  pure  passion.  That  he 
interferes  with  your  important  occupation,  crum- 
ples your  immaculateness,  has  a  soiled  face  and 
sticky  fingers  when  he  kisses  you,  do  not  enter  into 
his  thoughts.  That  anything  should  interfere  with 


62        MONTESSORI   CHILDREN 

his  caresses  would  wound  his  heart.  If  you  were 
disfigured  or  maimed,  he  would  still  vision  you  as 
the  beautiful  mother  whom  baby  eyes  see  only 
with  the  eyes  of  adoration. 

Is  this  a  love  that  we  can  teach? 

You  know  what  your  child  loves.  There  was 
the  ugly  yellow  puppy  with  muddy  feet  that 
stained  your  new  rug;  don't  you  remember  how 
the  Little  Chap  sobbed  so  long,  and  then  woke  up 
in  the  night  crying,  the  day  you  sent  away  the 
yellow  puppy?  He  loved,  too,  the  dirty  rag  doll 
that  you  burned  and  the  broken  toy  that  you 
threw  away,  and  that  little  street  gamin  of  a 
newsboy  who  stands  at  the  corner  in  all  kinds 
of  weather.  He  doesn't  love  ceremony  and  money 
and  the  opinions  of  other  people  as  we  do.  The 
Little  Chap  goes  out  into  the  highways  and  byways 
for  his  stuff  of  love.  And  he  doesn't  care  if  the 
thing  he  loves  is  ugly,  or  old,  or  halt,  or  lame, 
because  he  sees,  with  his  soul  eyes,  behind  the  veil 
of  appearances  to  the  real  of  it. 

Your  child  is  born  with  faith  and  hope,  too.  If 
you  tell  him  that  the  moon  is  made  of  green 
cheese  and  that  a  stork  dropped  him  down  the 
chimney,  he  believes  you,  and  when  he  grows  up 


NEW    SPIRITUAL    SENSE          63 

and  catches  you  in  the  lies,  he  has  one  less  peg 
in  his  moral  inner  room  to  pin  his  faith  in  the 
divine  to.  If  you  tell  him  that  you  will  take  him 
to  the  circus,  and  then  let  your  bridge  party  inter- 
fere with  that  promise,  the  Little  Chap  is  going  to 
be  less  hopeful  that  God  will  keep  His  promises, 
for  you  stand  for  the  divine  in  the  Little  Chap's 
beginnings  of  spirituality. 

Dr.  Montessori  says  that  we  often  crush  the 
child's  conscience  sense  by  not  giving  him  an  op- 
portunity to  exercise  it  as  he  is  led  to,  instinc- 
tively. We  must  let  our  children,  in  their  baby 
days,  love  as  they  wish  and  what  they  wish.  We 
must  be  quite  careful  to  give  them  true  concep- 
tions of  the  strange  world  in  which  they  find  them- 
selves, and  we  must  make  only  good  promises  to 
children  and  use  much  vigilance  in  keeping  those 
promises. 

Dr.  Montessori  sets  another  guidepost  for  us 
in  the  star-path  by  which  our  children  will  travel 
across  the  desert  of  unbelief  to  the  manger  where 
God,  incarnate,  lies.  She  tells  us  that,  as  the  Ten 
Commandments  were  a  very  simple  set  of  laws  for 
the  Israelites,  and  John,  in  his  preaching  of  sim- 
plicity, paved  the  way  for  Christ,  so  the  first  re- 


64        MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

ligious  teaching  of  the  little  child  should  have  this 
same  quality  of  directness. 

The  child's  first  religious  training  will  consist 
in  a  discrimination  between  good  and  evil. 

"  It  was  good  of  you  to  share  your  sweets  with 
sister.  When  you  ate  your  chocolate,  alone, 
yesterday,  I  was  sorry,  because  it  was  selfish." 

"  It  was  thoughtful  of  you  to  fetch  grandfather's 
cane  for  him.  Some  little  boys  would  not  have 
been  so  kind.55 

"  You  must  not  scream  and  kick  when  you  are 
angry.  It  is  wrong !  " 

We  might  say  in  contrast;  we  do,  ordinarily, 
say: 

"  You  must  share  because  I  wish  you  to." 

"  You  must  be  kind  because  the  world  likes  gen- 
tlemen." 

"  You  mustn't  scream  and  kick,  because  you  give 
me  a  headache  and  mar  my  furniture." 

Such  commands  are  quite  ineffectual,  because 
they  call  the  child's  attention  to  us  and  not  to 
his  own  acts.  But  patiently  and  effectually  to 
see  that  the  Little  Chap  knows  the  difference  be- 
tween good  and  evil  and  practices  good  instead 
of  evil — this  gives  him  a  chance  to  train  and 


NEW    SPIRITUAL    SENSE          65 

strengthen  his  conscience  sense  and  forms  the  be- 
ginnings of  his  moral  life. 

"  But  how  shall  I  give  my  child  an  idea  of  God?  " 
thousands  of  thinking  parents  object. 

It  isn't  necessary  to  give  the  idea  of  God  to 
your  child.  Dr.  Montessori  tells  us  that  every 
child  has  it. 

We  think  that  we  must  do  so  much  teaching  in 
order  to  educate  the  little  child's  mind,  or  his 
soul.  In  fact  we  need  to  do  less  teaching  than 
watching,  less  pruning  than  watering.  After  ob- 
serving our  little  ones'  spontaneous  manifestations 
of  love  and  giving  these  a  chance  to  increase,  and 
meeting  them  with  encouragement  after  conscien- 
tiously pointing  out  to  them  the  good  and  the  evil 
of  life  and  insisting  that  they  choose  the  good 
and  reject  the  evil — we  discover  a  miracle.  God 
comes  to  the  little  ones. 

Bruno,  starved  in  his  mind  and  starved  in  his 
heart,  and  never  having  heard  of  things  of  the 
spirit  except  in  terms  of  the  vilest  blasphemy, 
found  God  as  naturally  as  he  would  find  the  first 
gold  blossom  of  the  broom  braving  winter's  frosts 
on  the  Appian  Way. 

Our  own  Helen  Keller,  deaf  and  dumb  and  blind, 


66        MONTESSORI   CHILDREN 

knew  God  before  anything  that  her  teacher  could 
tell  her  about  Him  had  pierced  the  dark  wall  of 
her  sleeping  senses. 

Dr.  Montessori  asks  us  to  prepare  the  way  for 
this  miracle  in  our  homes.  She  says  that  she 
would  like  to  suggest  to  mothers  a  new  beatitude, 
"  Blessed  are  those  who  feel;  "  and  we  add, 

For  they  find  God. 


MARIO'S  FINGER  EYES 

Montessori  Sense-Training 

YOUE  little  one,  Mario,  might  have  been,  big 
eyes  instantly  glancing  a  bit  of  color,  something 
that  moved,  something  that  could  be  handled  or 
broken.  All  his  four  years  he  had  been  fighting 
his  mother,  his  home,  the  world — a  one-sided  fight, 
too,  for  everybody  and  everything  always  tri- 
umphed over  him  in  the  end.  He  was  so  little  and 
so  ineffectual  to  do  battle. 

And  the  times  when  he  had  been  punished  for 
breaking  his  mother's  cherished  plates  with  the 
pattern  of  raised  roses — plump  and  red — for 
clutching  in  loving,  chubby,  grimy  hands  the  soft 
silk  window  curtains  or  the  bright  velvet  table- 
cover  could  not  be  counted.  Yet  Mario  was  cheer- 
ful and  uncowed  and  continued  the  struggle,  the 
impulse  for  which  had  been  born  with  him,  to  use 
his  fingers  in  learning  about  the  world  of  things. 

To  check  this  impulse  was  the  object  of  every  - 
67 


68        MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

one  who  had  anything  to  do  with  little  Mario. 
There  was  his  grandmother  in  a  wonderful  silk 
headdress  and  a  yellow  wool  shawl,  fringed;  she 
would  not  let  Mario  clutch  the  cap  and  then  feel 
of  the  shawl,  as  his  fingers  itched  to.  There  was 
the  old  fruit  man  at  the  corner  near  Mario's 
house ;  he  shook  a  stick  at  children  who  handled 
his  round  and  square  measures,  his  fruits,  and 
vegetables  of  so  many  different  shapes.  There 
was  always  his  madre,  who  pursued  Mario  from 
waking  to  sleeping  time,  interfering  with  his  ac- 
tivities. 

"  Mario,  don't  run  your  fingers  along  the  win- 
dow ledge ;  don't  handle  the  door  latch.  You  will 
soil  them.  You  must  not  play  with  copper  bowls 
and  pots;  they  are  for  cooking,  not  for  little 
boys." 

As  the  warfare  continued,  Mario  grew  bolder. 
To  be  stopped  when  one  is  playing  with  a  fruit 
measure  or  a  door  latch  or  a  bright,  red  copper 
bowl  with  no  malicious  designs  upon  these  but 
only  to  satisfy  a  sense  of  hunger  for  knowledge 
of  form,  hurt  his  spirit. 

"  I  mil,"  he  announced  one  day,  when  his  grand- 
mother tried  to  rescue  her  cap  from  his  deft  fin- 


SENSE-TRAINING  69 

gering,  and  he  pulled  off  one  of  the  long,  silken 
streamers. 

"  I  will  not,"  he  further  asserted  when  his 
mother  wished  the  copper  pot  to  cook  her  beans, 
and  when  she  tried  to  take  it  from  him  forcibly, 
Mario  stamped  and  shrieked  and  struck  his  madre. 

The  habit  of  saying  "  I  will "  or  "  I  won't " 
in  situations  that  demand  the  will  to  decide,  "  I 
won't "  or  "  I  will  "  is  an  easy  habit  for  a  little 
child  to  form  and  a  most  dangerous  one,  morally. 
It  is  seldom  a  self-formed  but  a  parent-stimulated 
habit.  When  his  mother  put  Mario,  for  reforma- 
tion and  "  to  get  rid  of  him,"  in  The  House  of 
the  Children  at  the  Trionfale  School  in  Rome, 
it  was  with  the  assurance: 

"  He's  a  bad  little  boy.  He  never  does  what 
he  ought  to;  he's  always  in  mischief." 

"  What  should  be  a  little  child's  «  oughts  '  the 
first  years  of  life?  Isn't  what  we  call  getting  into 
mischief,  perhaps,  the  big  business  of  childhood?  " 
we  asked  ourselves  as  we  watched  Mario  in  his 
Montessori  development.  So,  at  least,  Mario's 
teacher  decided. 

"  Go  as  you  please,  do  as  you  wish,  play  with 
whatever  you  like — only  be  careful  not  to  hurt 


70        MONTESSORI   CHILDREN 

the  work  or  the  body  of  any  other  little  one," 
were  the  words  that  turned  Mario's  struggles  to 
educate  himself  into  a  joy  instead  of  a  fight. 

Sitting  in  the  light  of  the  Roman  sunshine  and 
the  smiles  of  the  other  children  of  the  Children's 
House,  Mario  began  to  do  the  thing  he  was  born 
for  in  babyhood — he  began  to  see  with  his  fingers. 

I  watched  him  for  days,  such  a  blessedly  good, 
chubby,  curly-headed  little  man  that  my  arms 
ached  to  hold  him,  instead  of  leaving  him  free  to 
trot  from  one  occupation  to  another,  busy,  con- 
centrated, educating  himself.  Mario's  mother,  his 
wise  old  grandmother,  the  canny  fruit  seller, — 
none  of  them  had  known  how  blurred  the  world 
looks  to  the  eyes  of  a  little  child.  Many  mothers 
are  not  able  to  see  with  the  eyes  of  a  child.  We 
grown-ups  who  comprehend  a  beautiful  landscape, 
a  lovely  fresco,  a  piece  of  miracle  machinery,  a 
fragile  porcelain  vase,  a  statue,  an  immortal  pile 
of  architecture  instantaneously,  analyzing  the 
form  that  makes  the  beauty,  never  stop  to  think 
how  we  grasp  it,  mentally.  It  is  the  color  and 
curve  of  the  landscape,  the  combination  of  lines 
in  the  fresco,  the  "  feel "  and  contour  of  the 
statue,  the  "  fit "  of  the  machinery,  the  design  of 


Replacing  the  solid  insets  by  the  sense  of  touch 
alone. 


Building   the    tower   and    the   broad   stair. 


SENSE-TRAINING  71 

the  vase,  the  combination  of  geometric  figures  in 
the  building,  that  make  the  beauty.  The  artist, 
the  inventor,  the  sculptor,  the  architect,  satu- 
rated their  finger  tips,  then  their  eyes,  and  last 
their  brains  with  a  knowledge  of  line  and  form 
before  they  saw  Fame  reaching  out  her  hands  to 
touch  theirs.  Every  little  child  is  born  with  a 
longing  to  feel  line  and  form,  not  perhaps  for 
Fame's,  but  for  Knowledge's  sake,  and  we  crush 
the  longing  when  we  say  "  don't  touch." 

Intent,  engrossed  Mario  worked  for  days  until 
he  grew  expert  in  piling,  one  upon  the  other,  the 
graded,  rose-colored  blocks  of  the  Montessori 
Tower.  Soon  he  could  erect  the  tower,  blind- 
folded. Just  a  fascinating  play  it  looked,  as  inter- 
esting as  is  the  play  of  our  babies  with  their 
nested  picture  blocks,  but  it  was  play  with  a 
purpose.  It  taught  Mario  to  feel  and  then  to 
discriminate,  mentally,  between  objects  that  differ 
in  dimension,  one  from  another. 

Then  came  the  fun  of  laying  in  order  the  graded 
blocks  of  the  Montessori  Broad  Stair.  Building 
steps,  it  was,  as  all  home  children  instinctively 
struggle  to  build  steps  with  their  blocks,  with 
dominoes,  with  pebbles  and  rocks  of  different  sizes. 


72         MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

Why  do  children  like  to  build  steps ;  is  it  not  be- 
cause they  live  in  a  world  of  high  and  low,  and 
higher  and  lower  things  ?  We  grown-ups  say,  "  It 
is  a  beautiful  sky-line,  the  tall  and  low  buildings 
rubbing  shoulders,"  or  "  The  clouds  are  banked 
in  a  red  and  gold  mass."  How  did  we  learn  the 
beauty  of  gradation  of  form  in  a  city,  in  nature? 
Once  when  we  were  as  little  as  Mario  we  tried 
to  build  stairs,  we  jumped,  happily,  from  one 
step  to  another;  we  climbed,  we  learned  height 
and  depth  by  feeling  them.  So,  Mario  learned 
to  see  minute  variations  in  the  height  of  objects 
through  the  broad  stair. 

He  spent  hours  fitting  the  little  wooden  cylin- 
ders in  their  places  in  their  frames.  How  he  had 
longed  to  play  with  the  vases  and  jugs  at  home, 
some  tall  and  some  short,  some  thick  and  some 
thin.  And  how  many  times  his  mother  had  pre- 
vented his  digging  rows  of  little  holes  in  the  gar- 
den in  which  to  fit,  first,  a  fat  thumb,  then  a  slim 
forefinger ;  last,  a  tiny  finger !  With  the  Mon- 
tessori  geometric  insets,  he  could  enjoy  this  hole 
play,  and,  at  the  same  time,  learn,  through  feel- 
ing, to  recognize  very  fine  differences  in  height 
and  breadth.  One  day  Mario  found  a  little  set 


SENSE-TRAINING  73 

of  drawers  in  the  big  white  material  cupboard  at 
the  Montessori  School.  It  made  him  remember 
his  grandmother's  great  shelf  of  drawers  with  the 
polished  brass  knobs.  In  these  were  hidden  fas- 
cinating, musty-smelling  wool  shawls,  silk  scarfs, 
soft  embroideries,  and  stiff,  bright  ribbons. 
Mario's  secret  happiness  had  been  to  climb  upon 
a  stool,  clutch  a  brass  knob,  pull,  and  then  delve 
pink  fingers  into  the  sense-feeding  horde  of  stuffs. 
He  would  close  his  eyes  and  enjoy  the  feel  of  them, 
but  there  was  always  the  rude  awakening. 

"  Naughty  Mario — don't  touch."  But  now  he 
had  these  other  drawers  full  of  stuffs  to  open,  to 
empty,  to  sort  the  contents,  to  crumple  the  stuffs 
in  his  hands,  and  then  match  velvet  to  velvet,  silk 
to  silk,  wool  to  wool,  blindfolded.  It  hadn't  been 
shawls  and  scarfs  and  embroideries  and  ribbons 
that  the  little  man  wanted,  but  a  chance  to  use 
his  fingers  in  learning  to  recognize  the  qualities 
of  objects;  rough,  soft,  smooth,  stiff. 

Otello  brought  a  great,  crimson  poppy  to  the 
Children's  House  one  day.  Poppies  to  the  Roman 
baby  are  as  dandelions  to  our  children,  so  lavish 
a  gift  of  the  nature  mother  as  to  be  of  little  value 
after  the  first  bloom  colors  the  grass.  Otello's 


74        MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

impulse  was  to  pull  off  the  already  dropping 
petals  of  the  flower,  but  Mario  rescued  it  from 
the  ruthless  baby  fingers.  Holding  the  fragile 
stem  between  forefinger  and  chubby  thumb,  he  ran 
the  other  forefinger  lightly  over  the  surface  of 
the  velvet-soft  petals  of  the  poppy.  Then  he  ran 
to  baby  Valia  and  touched  her  leaf-soft  cheek  with 
the  finger  that  taught  him  how  like  a  flower  petal 
in  softness  is  the  flesh  of  a  child. 

It  was  so  daily  an  application  of  newly-gained 
knowledge  as  to  be  unnoticed  save  by  a  wondering 
onlooker.  It  was  the  mind  enrichment  through 
sense-training  denied  Mario  by  his  home  and  of- 
fered him  by  Montessori. 

The  frames  for  geometric  insets  enthralled 
Mario  next.  To  take  out  of  its  place,  fit  in  again, 
and  refit  a  dozen,  twenty  times  the  different  sizes 
of  flat  wooden  circles,  squares,  triangles,  rectan- 
gles, and  other  forms  kept  the  little  fingers  busy 
and  the  opening  mind  concentrated  for  long 
spaces.  The  wooden  insets  are  large,  shining  with 
polish,  and  easy  to  handle  because  of  the  brass 
knob  attached  to  each.  As  Mario  lifted  one  out 
of  its  place  in  the  form  board,  he  ran  his  fingers 
around  the  edge,  then  around  the  empty  place  in 


A  fineness  of  perception  is  developed  by  discriminating 
different  textiles  blindfolded. 


SENSE-TRAINING  75 

the  board.  Soon  he  could  do  this  with  closed  eyes, 
fitting  wooden  figures  of  many  different  shapes 
and  sizes  correctly  in  the  form  board.  He 
matched  these  forms  to  corresponding  paper 
forms  mounted  on  cards  and  then  to  outlined 
forms. 

Here  was  a  circle  like  the  top  of  the  red  copper 
bowl,  and  a  smaller  circle  like  the  top  of  the  yellow 
majolica  mug  that  held  his  milk  in  the  morning. 
Here  was  a  rectangle  like  the  kitchen  window  at 
home  and  a  triangle  like  the  glittering  one  the 
band  man  struck  to  make  music.  Kitchen  utensils 
and  home  furnishings  and  the  street  band  are  as 
vastly  interesting  to  all  children  as  they  were  to 
little  Mario,  interesting  because  they  are  things 
of  color  and  texture  and  shape  and  sound. 

One  morning  Mario  showed  his  teacher  one  of 
the  rectangular  geometric  insets.  "  The  win- 
dow in  the  church,"  he  explained.  Then  he  picked 
up  a  rectangular  inset.  "  This  is  like  the  flower- 
bed in  the  Gardens,"  he  announced. 

Your  child  struggles  to  educate  himself  through 
his  senses  as  did  Mario.  You,  too,  perhaps,  not 
seeing  the  inspiration  in  the  active  little  fingers, 
say,  "  He  gets  into  mischief  all  the  time."  It  is 


76        MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

our  privilege  to  turn  child  mischief  into  educa- 
tion. Instead  of  taking  away  from  children  the 
objects  which  they  select  for  handling,  we  must 
study  those  objects  and  substitute  for  them  didac- 
tic materials  for  education  of  the  tactile  sense, 
the  sense  of  weight,  the  sense  of  form  and  contour. 

A  little  girl  whose  spirit  is  so  sensitively  at- 
tuned that  a  breath,  almost,  will  snap  the  too-taut 
strings  was  allowed  to  be  present  at  a  dinner  her 
mother  was  giving.  Through  a  wearisome  round 
of  courses,  the  little  one  sat  in  her  uncomfortable 
chair,  quiet,  good,  and  tracing  with  one  finger  the 
design  of  her  cut-glass  tumbler.  Sometimes  the 
blue  eyes  closed  as  she  tried  to  retrace  the  design 
in  the  air  or  on  the  table  linen.  At  last  her  mother 
saw  what  she  was  doing. 

"  Leave  the  table  immediately ! "  she  com- 
manded. "  You  are  a  very  impolite  child." 

She  thought  that  she  was  a  good  mother,  but 
the  tear-brimming  eyes  of  the  little  one,  disgraced, 
hurt,  should  have  mirrored  her  cruelty.  We  can't 
allow  children  to  finger  cut  glass,  but  we  ought 
to  furnish  them  with  a  substitute  for  sense-training 
that  will  remove  the  necessity. 

Our  children  are  born  into  a  world  of  which 


* r 


g 
o 
<t> 
fcfi 


to 

c 


SENSE-TRAINING  77 

they  know  nothing.  They  are  discoverers,  trav- 
elers touching  an  unknown  shore,  and  the  first 
business  of  their  new-found  life  is  to  adjust  them- 
selves to  their  environment.  Like  valiant  ex- 
plorers they  plunge  into  the  wilderness  in  which 
they  find  themselves.  We  furnish  them  with  food 
and  clothing  for  the  journey,  but  we  have  quite 
neglected  to  offer  them  at  the  beginning  any  chart 
or  compass. 

Because  of  this,  the  way  of  a  child  of  two  and 
a  half  to  four  years  is  a  stumbling  way  in  our 
homes.  He  is  hedged  in  by  a  wilderness  of  fur- 
nishings and  bric-a-brac  and  household  appliances 
and  mechanical  devices  and  different  kinds  of  ma- 
terials and  strange  forms  and  varied  colors.  It 
is  the  business  of  being  a  child  to  notice  and  handle 
and  smell  and  test  and  use  these  different  objects, 
but  we  continually  thwart  him  in  his  attempts  to 
make  these  social  adjustments.  In  so  doing  we 
turn  the  child  into  a  militant  instead  of  a  dis- 
coverer. He  must  conquer  his  wilderness.  Pre- 
vented from  learning  through  the  medium  of  his 
senses,  he  fights  to  learn,  and  we  say  that  he  is 
destructive  and  wilful  and  lacking  in  thoughtful- 
ness. 


78        MONTESSORI   CHILDREN 

Dr.  Montessori  offers  our  children  in  the  di- 
dactic material  for  sense-training  a  valuable  guide 
for  adjusting  himself  to  his  environment.  The 
solid  insets,  the  tower,  the  broad  and  long  stair 
teach  him  through  his  own  experiment  and  dis- 
covery the  qualities  which  all  the  objects  in  his 
world  possess;  height,  breadth,  length,  thickness 
in  all  their  combinations  and  gradations.  The 
color  spools  give  him  a  chance  to  recognize  and 
learn  practically  all  the  various  tints  and  shades 
that  surround  him  in  his  colorful  world.  The 
geometric  insets  bring  to  him,  through  his  senses 
of  touch  and  vision,  the  many  and  wonderful  com- 
binations of  line  with  line  and  with  curves  which 
constitute  the  form  of  the  world.  By  means  of 
the  Montessori  textiles  and  other  appliances  for 
exercising  the  sense  of  touch,  he  learns  to  detect 
and  discriminate  the  most  minute  gradations  of 
softness  and  roughness,  smoothness  and  coarse- 
ness. The  Montessori  sense-training  apparatus 
guides  the  child  on  his  spiritual  trip  through  his 
environment. 

It  is  the  guide,  however,  for  the  very  young 
child  whose  senses  are  hungry.  We  are  so  used 
to  waiting  on  our  one,  two,  and  three-year-old 


SENSE-TRAINING  79 

babies ;  we  are  so  busy  taking  out  of  their  hands 
our  own  precious  belongings  and  substituting  for 
them  a  toy,  that  the  Montessori  idea  of  guiding 
children,  mentally,  from  the  cradle,  is  strange  to 
us.  The  average  five  or  six-year-old  child  com- 
pletes the  Montessori  sense-training  quickly. 
What  next?  we  ask. 

To  be  able  to,  blindfolded,  fit  a  polished  wood 
rectangle  in  a  corresponding  rectangular  frame 
is,  to  the  minds  of  some  of  us,  the  climax  of  a 
Montessori  exercise.  To  Montessori  herself  it  is 
only  the  beginning  of  education  in  form ;  we  must 
help  the  child  to  see,  feel,  recognize  form  in  vari- 
ous combinations ;  to  draw,  to  love  as  pure  form 
in  the  world  about  him  as  he  has  learned  with 
this  geometric  inset.  The  Montessori  sense-train- 
ing appliances  should  be  used  as  the  genetic  psy- 
chologist uses  his  various  instruments  and  mental 
tests.  They  are  to  arouse  and  awake  into  activity 
habits  of  quick  perception,  keen  appreciation,  and 
constructive  invention. 

The  greatest  thing  we  can  do  for  a  child  is  to 
so  educate  it  that  it  knows  its  environment  and 
can  adjust  itself  to  social  conditions.  We  do  this 
when  we  teach  our  children  to  see,  to  hear,  to 


80        MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

touch  intelligently.  The  lure  of  the  senses  is  a 
spiritual  spell  in  childhood.  If  we  catch  it,  then, 
and  turn  it  into  channels  of  knowledge,  we  may 
develop  a  Marconi,  conqueror  of  space ;  a  Rodin, 
conqueror  of  form ;  a  Burbank,  conqueror  of  life — 
a  Carrel,  conqueror  of  death.  At  least  we  will 
have  developed  an  observer  who  knows  how  to 
use  his  senses  in  the  practical  living  of  life. 


RAFFAELO'S  HUNGER 

Color  Teaching.  Its   Value 

RAFFAELO'S  grandfather  had  been  a  shepherd 
in  the  Roman  hills,  not  so  much  because  he  liked 
to  tend  the  dull,  white  creatures,  but  on  account 
of  the  blue  roof  beneath  which  he  sat  all  day  and 
the  carpet  of  green  splashed  with  poppy  crimson 
and  primrose  gold  and  lupin  blue  that  lay  at  his 
feet,  and  the  sunset  that  he  waited  for  every 
night.  It  was  never  the  same,  that  sunset ;  like 
a  beautiful  Roman  ribbon  it  spread  itself  before 
his  eyes,  and  he  would  rather  see  it  than  go  home 
to  eat. 

Tucked  under  his  long,  wool  cloak,  he  carried 
a  pigment-daubed  palette  and  a  patch  of  canvas. 
As  the  lambs  and  their  mothers  grazed,  he  watched, 
hungrily,  for  picture  stuff:  a  bright  yellow  cart 
taking  its  slow  way  along  the  white  dust  of  the 
Via  Appia,  the  flower  girl  walking  in  to  Rome 
with  her  arms  full  of  roses,  the  gold  edges  of  a 
81 


82         MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

distant  wheat  field — these  fed  his  soul  and  satis- 
fied his  hunger. 

Because  the  State  was  blind  and  thought  that 
to  fight  is  more  vital  than  to  paint  beautiful 
pictures,  the  grandfather  of  Raffaelo  was  forced 
into  the  Italian  army.  The  day  that  they  sub- 
stituted a  gun  for  his  crook  and  threw  away  his 
palette,  they  killed  his  soul.  The  grandfather  of 
Raffaelo  made  a  very  poor  soldier,  indeed. 
The  little  boy  that  he  left  at  home  on  the  Cam- 
pagna  grew  up,  and  was  a  poor  soldier,  too; 
and  when  he  had  finished  military  service 
he  married  and  went  to  live  in  a  tenement  in 
Rome,  and  in  due  time  little  Raffaelo  was 
born. 

It  was  all  quite  commonplace,  and  like  the  story 
of  many  other  families.  But  it  had,  too,  its  ele- 
ment of  the  unusual.  With  those  long-ago,  shep- 
herding days  on  the  Roman  Campagna,  a  gnawing 
hunger  had  begun.  It  wasn't  a  body  hunger, 
but  a  hunger  of  the  spirit.  It  killed  the  body 
of  the  grandfather  of  Raffaelo — spirit  hunger 
is  more  destructive  than  a  hunger  for  bread. 
Down  through  the  years  it  took  its  gnawing  way. 
It  killed  the  youth  in  the  father  of  Raffaelo  and 


COLOR    TEACHING  83 

it  took  possession  of  him  in  the  gray  streets  of 
the  city  and  stifled  his  manhood. 

Then  the  hunger  pierced  the  spirit  of  little 
Raffaelo,  and  that  was  where  it  stopped — a  cruel, 
unsatiated  thing.  With  the  gathered  strength  of 
all  those  years,  it  starved  the  baby. 

He  couldn't  have  explained  in  words  just  what 
he  was  hungry  for.  In  fact  he  couldn't  explain 
anything  very  well,  being  not  quite  three  years 
old.  Only,  he  was  continually  unsatisfied  when 
he  looked  at  the  ugliness  of  the  dull  walls  of  his 
home,  and  when  his  mother  took  him  along  the 
hard,  gray  streets  of  the  city  he  tugged  and  pulled 
at  her  hand  whenever  he  passed  a  corner  flower 
stand,  or  a  cart  piled  high  with  a  mass  of  colored 
vegetables. 

Raffaelo  was  beauty  hungry,  as  his  father  had 
been  and  his  grandfather.  And  no  one  knew  it; 
and  no  one  would  have  cared  if  they  had  known. 

No  one? 

Little  Raffaelo  trudged  across  the  court  one 
morning  to  the  Children's  House  in  the  Scuola 
Famagosta,  near  which  he  lived,  and  there  found 
a  kind  welcome  and  a  happy,  busy  community  of 
children  like  himself.  Neat,  in  his  clean  apron, 


84.        MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

and  with  big,  questioning  eyes,  he  sat  apart  from 
the  others  in  one  corner  of  the  room,  watching. 
Certain  of  the  children  were  writing  big,  plain 
script  on  the  blackboard;  others  sat  quietly  read- 
ing to  themselves  from  big  picture  books.  Raf-, 
faelo's  glance  shifted  from  these  to  a  child  who 
stood  near  him,  working  at  a  low  table.  What 
had  he  brought  from  the  white  shelves  in  that  big 
wooden  box?  Raffaelo  wondered.  Why  was  he 
turning  the  box  over?  But  the  table  was  suddenly 
covered  with  a  mass  of  color,  such  as  only  the 
Romans  know  how  to  dye.  From  the  box  came 
reel  upon  reel  of  ravishingly  colored  silks,  every 
color  that  tints  sky  and  field  and  garden — crim- 
son, orange,  lemon,  the  deep  green  of  the  grass, 
and  the  gray  green  of  the  olive  leaf ;  the  blue  that 
makes  wild  iris  and  children's  eyes,  the  purple 
of  grapes  when  the  sun  shines  on  the  vineyards. 
If  Raffaelo  could  have  counted,  he  would  have 
known  that  there  were  sixty-four  of  these  flat, 
white  wooden  spools,  wound  with  eight  colors  and 
eight  of  each  color,  showing  almost  all  the  grad- 
ing of  color  that  makes  this  old  earth  of  ours 
so  lovely. 

The  colors  trickled  like  a  life-giving  stream  into 


',-; 


o 
H 


COLOR    TEACHING  85 

Raffaelo's  starved  senses.  He  reached  for  the 
color  spools,  snatching  a  great  fistful  away  from 
the  other  child. 

"  Mio;  mio!    Me;  me!"  he  cried. 

They  were  his.  Some  of  us  steal  bread  when 
we  are  hungry.  Some  of  us  steal  love  when  we 
are  famished  for  it.  Children  steal  because  we 
or  the  world  have  starved  them  of  something 
which  they  crave  for  their  natural,  best  develop- 
ment of  body,  mind,  or  soul.  The  habitual  public 
school  teacher,  the  average  mother  of  to-day, 
would  have  said: 

"  Give  those  colors  back.  It's  wicked  to  take 
something  that  is  not  yours !  " 

The  directress  of  this  Montessori  school,  in 
which  teaching  and  mothering  are  practiced  in 
new  ways,  watched  Raffaelo  for  a  moment,  asking 
herself : 

"Why  does  this  child  steal?  Is  he  blind  to 
law  because  his  need  is  so  great?  " 

Then  she  crossed  to  Raffaelo,  bringing  with 
her  a  handful  of  color  spools — two  red,  two  blue, 
two  yellow. 

"  These  are  yours,"  she  said.  "  Will  you  give 
your  little  neighbor's  colors  back  to  him,  because 


86        MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

it  was  not  right  to  take  them?  When  you  have 
carried  to  him  every  one  of  the  spools,  return  to 
me  and  I  will  tell  you  about  your  colors." 

Happily,  Raffaelo  did  as  he  was  told,  receiving 
his  first  lesson  in  ethics  before  he  had  his  first 
color  lesson.  Returning,  he  stood,  wide-eyed  and 
fascinated,  beside  the  directress  as  she  held  out  to 
him  two  of  the  color  spools. 

"  This  is  red,"  she  explained,  laying  the  red 
spool  on  the  white  table  in  front  of  him,  and 
waiting  a  moment  or  two,  that  he  might  make 
the  mental  association  between  the  name  of  the 
color  and  the  color  itself.  Then  she  showed  him 
a  blue  wound  spool. 

"  This  is  blue,"  she  said,  laying  his  spool  at 
the  opposite  side  of  the  table  from  the  red  one, 
and  again  waiting  for  Raffaelo  to  make  the  asso- 
ciation of  name  and  color.  Taking  the  next  step 
in  this  Montessori  teaching,  she  pointed  to  the 
red  wound  spool,  and  asked: 

"  What  is  this,  Raffaelo?  " 

"  Red,"  he  laughed  back. 

"  And  this?  "  pointing  to  the  other  one. 

"  Blue ! "  Raffaelo  almost  shouted  in  his  de- 
light at  acquiring  knowledge. 


COLOR    TEACHING  87 

Then  came  the  last  step  in  Raffaelo's  lesson. 
Holding  out  the  remaining  tablets  in  the  palm  of 
her  hand,  the  directress  said : 

"  Show  me  red,  Raffaelo.     And  show  me  blue." 

With  no  mistake,  the  little  color  lover  selected 
the  red,  the  blue,  and  placed  each  on  his  table, 
matching  them  to  the  corresponding  spools. 

"  These  are  yellow,"  the  directress  explained 
to  him,  giving  him  the  two  remaining  spools.  Then 
she  left  him,  having  given  him  the  food  for  clear, 
colorful  thought  for  which  two  generations  of 
thwarted  painters  had  made  him  long. 

All  the  morning  Raffaelo  played  with  his  six 
color  spools,  gathering  them  together  into  a  pile, 
handling  them,  holding  them  up  to  the  light,  that 
he  might  watch  the  play  of  sunshine  and  shade 
upon  their  beauty,  pairing  them  upon  his  table, 
repeating  to  himself :  "  Red,  blue,  yellow !  "  Some- 
times he  watched  his  small  neighbor,  who  had 
grown  very  expert  in  color  lore  and  could  name 
all  the  colors  and  lay  the  spools  in  chromatic 
order  on  his  table,  eight  rows  headed,  severally, 
by  black,  red,  orange,  yellow,  green,  blue,  violet, 
and  brown,  and  each  row  containing  eight  grada- 
tions of  its  color. 


88        MONTESSORI   CHILDREN 

When  this  child  completed  his  series  of  orderly 
color  scales  he  went  to  the  window  and  looked  out 
at  the  Roman  hill  rising  back  of  the  school.  To 
the  child  who  had  not  received  Montessori  color 
teaching,  the  hill  would  have  been  a  shapeless, 
colorless  bit  of  earth.  To  this  child,  who  could 
see  color  in  its  finest  gradation,  it  was  a  landscape 
where  one  could  trace  the  gold  outline  of  orange 
and  lemon,  the  red  tiling  of  a  vine-tender's  house 
near  the  top  and  back  of  it  a  sky  that  was  violet — 
not  blue.  He  looked  at  the  hill  for  a  long  time. 
Then  he  selected  an  outlined  picture  of  a  tree, 
and  looking  intently  at  a  box  of  colored  pencils, 
selected  one  that  was  just  the  color  of  a  cedar 
and  proceeded  to  fill  in  the  outline. 

To  Raffaelo,  the  child  was  a  spellworker. 
Watching  this  fascination,  the  directress  gave  Raf- 
faelo a  box  of  color  spools,  emptying  them  out 
and  allowing  him  to  try  and  differentiate  the 
colors,  putting  each  back  in  its  right  compartment 
in  the  box.  She  did  not  burden  his  mind  with 
names.  He  was  feeding  his  senses  by  just  han- 
dling and  feeling  the  colors,  and  he  was  unspeak- 
ably happy.  When  the  noon  hour  came,  he  did 
not  want  to  go  home.  When  his  bedtime  came, 


Grading   each    standard    color    and    its    related 
colors  in  chromatic  order. 


All  the  colors  of  nature  may  be  found. 


COLOR   TEACHING  89 

that  night,  he  escaped  from  his  mother  and  ran 
to  the  window,  looking  out.  The  night  before,  he 
had  looked  down  at  the  soiled,  unbeautiful  street; 
to-night  he  looked  up.  The  sun  was  just  setting, 
a  ruby  ball  in  a  sea  of  amber. 

"  See ! "  Raffaelo  shouted,  pointing  to  the  sun- 
set. "  Red ;  yellow !  " 

As  his  mother  picked  him  up  and  carried  him 
away  from  the  window,  he  looked  deep  down  into 
her  eyes.  "  Blue,"  he  said,  seeing  them  for  the 
first  time  in  all  their  beauty.  The  hunger  of  Raf- 
faelo was  fed. 

Every  child  is  color  hungry.  Your  child  may 
be  a  painter  in  the  making,  heir  to  a  century-old 
talent  that  somebody  had  to  bury,  but  which  would 
not  die  and  rose  and  haunted.  Or  he  may  be  an 
average  child  who  will  be  happier  and  better  all 
his  life  if  he  can  see  each  fine  gradation  of  color 
that  tints  the  sunset  and  can  feed  his  soul  on  a 
beautiful  Titian  or  a  Fra  Angelico. 

We  have  thought  that  we  were  teaching  our 
children  color  when  we  called  their  attention  to 
a  colored  object.  A  child  is  much  more  apt  to 
associate  taste  with  the  apple  which  we  show  him 
when  we  try  to  give  him  a  color  lesson,  and  quite 


90        MONTESSORI   CHILDREN 

possibly  we  make  a  false  statement  when  we  say 
that  the  apple  is  red.  Very  few  apples  are  red; 
they  are  dark  red,  light  red,  orange,  or  yellow 
in  tint.  Why  not  begin  the  other  way  round,  as 
Dr.  Montessori  does,  and  teach  pure  color,  giving 
the  child  the  joy  that  comes  from  discovering  for 
himself  just  what  pigment  nature  used  in  paint- 
ing the  apple. 

In  teaching  children  color,  we  will  use,  if  pos- 
sible, Dr.  Montessori's  own  box  of  sixty-four  color 
spools  that  include  almost  all  the  tints  and  shades 
of  the  prismatic  colors,  black  to  gray,  and  the 
scale  of  browns.  If  we  are  not  so  fortunate  as  to 
be  able  to  use  this  apparatus,  which  is  a  most 
careful  and  scientific  analysis  of  color,  we  can  try 
to  study  color  ourselves,  and  point  it  out  to  chil- 
dren as  it  is  found  in  the  home  in  textiles,  silk 
and  worsted,  papers,  flowers,  and  colored  crayons 
and  paints. 

In  teaching  color  at  home  we  may  all  follow 
Dr.  Montessori's  own  simple  method.  The  Mon- 
tessori directress  might  have  tried  to  teach  Raf- 
faelo  color  as  we,  in  America,  teach  our  children, 
saying : 

"  See  the  ball ;  it  is  red.     The  forget-me-not  is 


COLOR   TEACHING  91 

blue.  See  the  pretty  robin  redbreast,"  and  in 
making  these  statements  confusing  in  the  child's 
mind  the  concepts  of  toy,  flowers,  birds,  and  colors 
when  all  he  needs  is  color.  Every  child  wants  to 
make  his  own  application  of  knowledge.  Instead, 
the  girl  who  had  been  trained  under  Dr.  Mon- 
tessori  had  followed  the  only  true  method  of  teach- 
ing any  fact,  the  method  that  lies  at  the  basis 
of  Montessori  education  miracles.  Dr.  Montessori 
says  that  teaching  must  be  simple  and  objective. 
There  hasn't  been  enough  of  "  calling  a  spade  a 
spade  "  in  our  American  schools  and  homes. 

Show  your  child  red,  or  the  letter  A,  or  a  moral 
fact — it  doesn't  matter  much  which — and  name  it 
red,  or  A,  or  right. 

Ask  him  to  tell  you  just  what  you  told  him 
about  it. 

Ask  him  to  pick  out  red  from  other  colors,  or 
A  from  other  letters,  or  a  moral  act  from  im- 
moral acts.  This  is  Montessori  teaching  reduced 
to  A  B  C,  but  it  is  teaching  that  is  successful. 

Our  homes  may  be  made  as  full  of  color  and 
beauty  for  little  children  as  are  the  Children's 
Houses.  The  use  of  the  prism,  the  Montessori 
color  spools,  the  color  top,  our  beautifully  graded 


92        MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

colored  crayons  and  water  colors  for  filling  in 
outlined  pictures,  a  study  of  the  colored  papers  to 
be  had  for  paper  dolls'  clothes,  the  daily  watching 
of  the  color  changes  in  sunrise  and  sunset — all 
these  open  the  spirit  eyes  of  the  child.  Then  we 
will  lead  children  to  notice  and  appreciate  har- 
monious blending  of  tints  and  shades  in  our  walls, 
our  rugs,  our  gardens,  our  picture  galleries. 

Of  what  value  is  it  that  the  child's  chromatic 
sense  be  trained  by  learning  to  know  and  dis- 
criminate between  red,  blue,  and  yellow,  and  from 
this  to  acquire  a  facility  in  knowing  the  scale  of 
grays  and  browns?  It  means  more  for  the  child 
than  just  the  soul-satisfaction  that  comes  from 
learning  how  to  use  the  eyes.  It  means  starting 
the  brain  machine  and  then  looking  out  for  the 
switch. 

The  first  morning  that  I  met  little  Mario,  one 
of  my  child  Montessori  friends  in  Rome,  he  looked 
me  over  from  head  to  foot,  ran  to  a  color  box, 
selected  a  color  spool  of  the  exact  shade  of  gray 
blue  of  my  suit  and  showed  it  to  me  joyfully.  In 
almost  the  same  second  that  he  made  this  mental 
decision,  he  saw  that  the  quick  movements  of  little 
Valia  were  threatening  the  safety  of  a  glass  vase 


COLOR   TEACHING  93 

that  stood,  holding  flowers,  on  a  table  at  the  op- 
posite end  of  the  room.  Like  a  flash,  Mario  ran, 
held  the  vase,  and  prevented  the  catastrophe. 

To  be  able  to  think  down  the  color  scale  from 
blue  to  a  blue  that  is  mixed  with  gray ;  to  be  able 
to  think  in  another  kind  of  mental  scale  from 
cause  to  effect — these  are  both  chromatic  mind 
operations. 

To  know  color  means  satisfying  your  child's 
beauty  hunger.  It  means,  also,  starting  him  on 
the  road  to  logical  thinking. 


THE  GOING  AWAY  OF  ANTONIO 

Directing  the  Child  Will 

ANTONIO  had  a  longing  to  do. 

Since  babyhood,  he  had  watched  the  madre 
doing  about  the  house,  the  padre  who  left  each 
morning  and  returned  each  night  after  a  day  of 
doing  somewhere. 

All  of  Antonio's  most  interesting  world  of  little 
things  revolved  about  a  circle  of  persistent  activ- 
ity. The  earth  in  the  garden  moved  with  its  life 
of  roots  and  bulbs,  the  very  small  ant  creatures 
crept  about  from  sunrise  to  sunset  with  their  sand 
burdens,  the  gray  branches  of  the  olive  opened  to 
show  their  hidden  treasures  of  leaves ;  the  birds 
built;  Luigi,  the  old  farmer  beyond  the  gar- 
den, continually  loaded  and  unloaded  his  creak- 
ing yellow  cart.  Antonio  absorbed  this  life 
energy  with  as  much  hunger  as  he  ate  his  soup 
and  figs. 

"  I  will,  also,  do  all  day,"  he  decided,  ready  to 
try  the  adventure. 

94 


DIRECTING   THE    WILL  95 

"  I  will  make  a  little  garden,"  he  chose  one 
morning. 

The  spade  was  too  huge  for  baby  fingers,  the 
frost-hardened  ground  demanded  force  in  digging. 
Some  hyacinth  stalks,  just  pushing  their  odorous, 
purple  way  up  through  the  mold,  were  broken  by 
Antonio's  eager  effort.  Still,  the  little  boy  per- 
sisted, endeavoring  to  accomplish  the  task  that  his 
imagination  pictured — a  little  round  flower-bed  of 
his  own,  made  by  his  hands,  and  in  which  flowers 
of  all  colors  might  raise  their  heads  overnight. 
Now  he  smelled  them;  now  he  could  feel  their 
velvet-soft  petals. 

"  Stop !  Come  here,  naughty  Antonio.  You 
cannot  make  a  garden;  you  are  too  small.  And 
you  dirty  your  clean  apron." 

Antonio  dropped  the  spade  as  the  words  of 
his  madre  shrilled  through  the  air.  He  sat  down 
in  a  discouraged  heap  on  the  edge  of  the  path. 
Always,  his  madre  could  persist  in  tasks,  but  he 
was  continually  interfered  with.  Why? 

But  with  the  buoyancy  of  childhood,  the  little 
man  suddenly  jumped  up.  A  rattle  of  tin  bells 
and  a  strident  shriek  of  protesting,  ungreased 
wheels  were  the  prelude  to  Luigi's  approach.  In 


96        MONTESSORI   CHILDREN 

his  cart  of  oranges  and  lemons,  with  bunches  of 
poppy  and  wheat  stuck  in  the  chinks,  Luigi  rode 
down  the  lane.  His  smiling  face  was  as  russet 
and  wrinkled  as  an  old  nut,  bits  of  miracle-hiding 
clod  stuck  to  his  blue  smock.  As  he  passed,  he 
tossed  an  orange  to  Antonio. 

"  I  will  be  a  farmer.  How  fine  to  earn  money 
for  my  family,  as  Luigi  does,"  little  Antonio  de- 
cided. He  ran  to  the  house  and,  pulling  out  his 
little  cart,  loaded  it  with  some  of  the  vegetables 
that  stood  in  baskets  in  the  kitchen.  He  trundled 
it  up  and  down,  calling  his  wares  as  he  had  heard 
Luigi.  At  first  his  madre  laughed.  Then,  watch- 
ing him,  her  smile  furrowed  itself  into  a  frown. 

"  Why  play  that  you  are  Luigi,  who  is  only 
a  farmer?"  she  expostulated.  "Be  a  great  gen- 
eral. Here  are  your  toy  soldiers."  She  pulled 
his  little  cart  away  from  Antonio  and  pushed  into 
his  arms  a  box  of  gaudy  tin  soldiers. 

66  Drill  them ;  command  them,"  the  madre  urged 
Antonio. 

Antonio  watched,  sadly,  the  demolition  of  the 
little  cart  which  stood  for  playing  into  bread- 
winning.  His  soldiers  were  painted  manikins,  not 
very  steady  on  their  legs  and  only  slightly  inter- 


DIRECTING   THE    WILL  97 

esting.  He  tried  to  stand  them  in  rows  and  they 
all  tumbled  down.  He  changed  them  for  his  ball, 
and  his  madre  suggested  that  a  picture  book  would 
be  a  better  plaything  for  the  house,  taking  the 
ball  away  from  him.  When  he  was  absorbed  in 
the  book,  she  tore  him  from  it  for  a  walk  with 
her  in  the  streets. 

So  it  always  happened  with  Antonio.  No  one 
allowed  him  to  persist  in  an  occupation,  no  one 
allowed  him  to  choose  what  he  should  do,  and  each 
day's  activities  were  decided  for  him. 

From  a  strong-willed  baby  whose  impulses  were 
all  good,  Antonio  drifted  into  weak-willed  little 
boyhood.  It  was  as  if  he  were  daily  followed  by 
a  spirit  of  indecision. 

"Shall  I  concentrate  on  this  play?"  Antonio 
would  ask  himself,  and  in  reply  the  spirit  which 
had  risen  from  his  babyhood  influences  whispered 
in  his  ear,  "  No." 

Then  came  his  manhood,  and  he  asked  himself 
the  same  question. 

"Why  persist?  It  is  easier  to  shift,  continu- 
ally, from  one  occupation  to  another,  not  doing 
anything  long,  or  well. 

"Why  trouble  to  choose?     My  mother  made 


98        MONTESSORI   CHILDREN 

decisions  for  me  when  I  was  a  little  boy ;  the  public 
school  teachers  chose  my  studies  for  me ;  now  that 
I  am  a  man,  let  other  men  think  for  me.  I  have 
no  power  to  control  my  will." 

How  simple  a  solution  of  the  life  question !  The 
fingers  of  Antonio  that  had  itched  in  babyhood 
to  make  the  earth  bloom  and  to  earn  bread  closed 
quiescently  about  a  dagger  handed  him  by  a  man 
who  said,  "  Come  with  me ;  do  as  I  decide  for  you." 
The  crime  Antonio  did  was  not  his  fault,  nor  the 
fault  of  his  accomplice.  It  was  the  fault  of  his 
madre. 

Dr.  Montessori  tells  the  story  of  the  child  whose 
will  is  misdirected  in  babyhood.  He  is  the  child 
whom  his  mother  and  the  public  school  system 
mold  into  a  lump  of  putty  by  thinking  for  him. 

The  greatest  problem  of  to-day  in  child-train- 
ing is,  how  shall  we  help  our  little  ones  to  strength 
of  will?  Civilization  is  being  sapped  by  our  weak- 
lings. Home-training,  the  public  schools  do  not 
develop  character.  Dr.  Montessori  tells  us  that 
this  is  because  parents  and  teachers  do  not  know 
what  will,  fundamentally,  is. 

Dr.  Montessori  says,  "  To  will  is  to  be  able. 
The  little  child  who  persistently  struggles  to  pile 


DIRECTING   THE    WILL  99 

block  upon  block  until  a  miniature  tower  or  castle 
rises  under  his  fingers,  persisting  until  he  com*- 
pletes  the  labor,  is  taking  his  first  step  toward 
will-training. 

"  Family  life,  trade  life  are  built  up  on  this 
persistency.  Whether  it  shows  itself  in  loving, 
or  giving  or  working,  constancy  makes  the  social 
will.  Every  motor  activity  is  an  act  of  will,  and 
constancy  in  right  activities  makes  character." 

Other  great  teachers  have  said  the  study  of 
mathematics  and  the  dead  languages,  the  military 
discipline  of  the  army,  mortification  of  the  flesh, 
make  character.  To  train  a  child's  will  we  feel  we 
must  crucify  it  upon  the  cross  of  our  desires.  A 
child  must  obey  us,  we  say,  follow  our  caprices  and 
chisel  himself  into  a  likeness  to  us,  because  we  wish 
him  to  be  like  us.  Why  should  children  be  little 
men  and  women?  Are  we  so  sure  of  our  own  per- 
fection that  we  have  a  right  to  force  our  person- 
ality upon  that  of  our  children? 

Dr.  Montessori  gives  us  a  new  rule  for  develop- 
ing character  in  children.  She  says : 

"  Seek  the  child's  first  longings  if  you  would 
train  his  will.  Give  him  the  foundation  of  will  by 
helping  him  to  concentrate  on  something  he  in- 


100      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

stinctively  craves  to  be  busy  about  and  so  lay  the 
foundation  stones  of  his  character." 

The  little  child's  first  impulses  to  be  active  are 
good.  He  wants  to  be  about  his  father's  business 
by  taking  part  in  the  activities  of  the  home.  We 
make  our  children  weak-willed  by  our  own  ca- 
priciousness  in  interfering  with  their  attempts  to 
be  active.  We  dress  them,  we  feed  them,  we  wait 
on  them,  we  drive  them  to  play,  we  lead  them ; 
we  put  them  in  kindergartens  where  they  flit  from 
one  occupation  to  another  without  an  opportunity 
to  concentrate  on  one;  we  put  them  in  schools 
where  their  days  are  cut  up  into  little  bundles  of 
study,  tied  with  the  iron  chains  of  Schedule  that 
make  prisoners  of  children;  we  continually  decide 
for  our  little  ones  and  kill  their  characters  with 
the  sword  of  misdirected  kindness. 

Some  children  are  born  with  the  color  of  paint- 
ers in  their  souls,  and  we  punish  them  for  soiling 
our  pictures  and  mussing  our  tapestries  and 
trampling  upon  our  gardens.  May  we  not  look 
beyond  their  impotent  acts  to  the  spirit-longing 
that  prompted  them  and  put  into  their  hands  the 
best  in  the  way  of  color:  paints,  crayons,  books, 
flowers  that  will  satisfy  their  desires  and  give 


DIRECTING   THE    WILL          101 

them  an  opportunity  to  concentrate  on  the  activ- 
ity they  instinctively  crave.  So  they  gain  will 
power. 

Other  children  are  born  with  a  vision  of  the 
builder  in  their  eyes,  and  we  thwart  them  when 
they  try  to  use  the  furnishings  of  the  home  in  a 
process  of  reconstruction.  May  we  not  equip  our 
little  architects  with  materials  for  building,  call 
their  attention  to  the  classic  in  architecture  and 
art,  give  them  a  chance  to  build  their  own  char- 
acters ? 

Most  children  are  born  little  cosmopolites — 
small  world  citizens  who  explore  with  the  greatest 
interest  the  strange,  new  environment  in  which 
they  find  themselves.  These  are  the  children  whom 
our  present  system  of  coercion  in  home  and  school 
hurts  most.  We  crush  their  wills  by  not  giving 
them  an  opportunity  to  follow  their  instinctive 
interests  in  babyhood.  The  innate  impulses  of  such 
children  are  good.  They  must  explore  and  pro- 
duce around  themselves.  They  must  be  helped 
to  wise  choice  and  right  decisions.  So  they  grow 
to  willed  man  and  womanhood. 

Is  this  following  of  personal  impulse,  as  shown 
in  Montessori-trained  children,  productive  of 


102      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

better  concentration  than  we  find  in  our  public 
schools  to-day? 

Part  of  the  Montessori  didactic  material  for 
teaching  numbers  consists  of  a  cardboard  case  into 
which  cards  bearing  big  black  figures  may  be 
slipped,  giving  the  child  an  opportunity  to  work 
out  number  combinations.  A  little  lad  of  five 
discovered  one  morning,  when  I  was  observing  at 
the  Via  Giusti  Montessori  school  in  Rome,  that 
he  could  slip  into  his  case  cards  in  regular  succes- 
sion that  would  count  to  one  hundred  by  fives. 
He  spread  out  his  cards  upon  the  sunny  floor, 
provided  himself  with  the  polished  counting  sticks 
for  verifying  each  operation;  then  kneeling  in 
front  of  his  counting  frame,  he  went  to  work, 
alone,  concentrated. 

It  was  visiting  day  at  the  School.  Tourists, 
teachers,  students  lined  the  room  to  the  number 
of  forty  or  fifty,  leaving  the  children  scant  space 
to  work,  and  as  the  little  boy's  numerical  adven- 
ture began,  they  crowded  closer  to  watch  him. 
An  American  public  school  child  would  have  grown 
restive  and  self-conscious,  but  this  little  Mon- 
tessori lad  might  have  been  alone  in  the  Sahara, 
so  quiet,  so  unheeding  of  anything  but  his  own 


DIRECTING   THE    WILL          103 

occupation  was  he.  The  number  cards  are  large, 
and  it  took  a  good  many  to  reach  one  hundred. 
The  little  fellow  spread  them  out  in  the  center 
of  the  floor,  then  carried  the  row  under  the  chairs 
of  the  visitors,  not  seeming  to  notice  the  presence 
of  the  grown-ups. 

The  morning  grew  gold  with  noon,  and  the  other 
children,  quietly  putting  away  their  materials, 
spread  the  low  tables  for  the  midday  meal.  Little 
white  bowls,  snowy  napkins,  carefully  laid  spoons 
— then  the  steaming  chicken  broth.  Still  the  little 
counter  did  not  move.  He  had  reached  seventy- 
five,  after  verifying  every  number  he  had  regis- 
tered in  the  case.  One  of  the  wee  waitresses  for 
the  day  carried  his  red  and  green  luncheon  bas- 
ket and  set  it  down  on  the  floor  in  front  of  him; 
he  did  not  heed  it. 

"  Why  doesn't  somebody  stop  that  child's  count- 
ing and  make  him  eat  his  lunch,"  expostulated 
a  nervous  American  school  teacher,  watching. 
"  Children  should  be  made  to  do  certain  things  at 
certain  times,"  she  explained. 

Just  then  the  boy  slowly  and  with  great  pains 
fitted  a  figure  one  and  two  ciphers  into  the  count- 
ing case.  Like  a  little  conqueror  he  stood  up, 


104      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

folded  his  arms,  and  looked  at  the  perfect  result 
of  two  hours'  willed,  concentrated  work.  A  smile 
broke  the  baby  face  into  dimples,  and  running 
out  into  the  garden,  he  began  to  play  like  a  little 
colt.  He  was  not  tired.  He  was  not  hungry. 
He  was  only  joyful  at  this  conquest  of  his  will. 

Montessori  will-training  proves  itself  in  results. 

The  practical  life  and  gymnastic  exercises  of 
the  method  have  a  peculiar  value  in  relation  to 
the  strengthening  of  the  child  will.  Once  a  child 
has  learned  to  inhibit  his  scattering  muscular  dis- 
order in  such  co-ordinations  as  are  involved  in 
dressing  and  undressing,  feeding  himself,  bathing, 
taking  part  in  the  everyday  work  of  the  home  as 
far  as  possible ;  in  walking,  running,  marching, 
skipping,  dancing  to  music,  and  the  other  rhythmic 
and  gymnastic  exercises  involved  in  the  Montessori 
system,  he  has  fixed  a  permanent  habit  of  mus- 
cular control  which  establishes,  also,  mental  con- 
trol. To  be  able  to  place  dishes  and  silver  in  an 
orderly  way  on  a  table,  to  carry  and  balance  a 
tray  containing  several  filled  cups  or  glasses,  to 
be  responsible  for  a  certain  drawer  or  cupboard 
shelf  or  case  in  which  are  contained  play  materials 
is  to  be  able  to  control  mind  as  well  as  body. 


DIRECTING   THE    WILL          105 

The  muscular  education  of  Montessori  that  has 
a  direct  bearing  upon  the  direction  and  develop- 
ment of  the  child's  will  is  included  in  the  primary 
activities  of  everyday  life,  in  walking,  greeting, 
rising,  and  handling  objects  gracefully;  in  the 
proper  care  of  the  person,  in  taking  part  in  the 
management  of  the  household,  in  gardening,  in 
such  handwork  as  clay  modeling  and  drawing  and 
in  all  properly  co-ordinated  gymnastic  and  rhyth- 
mic movements.  This  new  and  direct  will-training 
is  possible  in  any  home. 

A  more  subtle  but  quite  as  important  phase  of 
control  of  the  will  through  doing  is  seen  in  con- 
nection with  the  child's  use  of  the  didactic  ap- 
paratus, especially  the  solid  and  geometric  insets, 
the  tower,  and  the  broad  and  long  stair.  In  the 
use  of  each  of  these  there  lies  for  the  child  a  very 
important  quality  of  self-correction.  A  broad 
cylinder  will  not  fit  into  a  narrow  hole ;  the  plain 
rectangular  inset  cannot  be  made  to  slip  into  the 
outline  of  the  board  intended  for  a  square ;  a  mis- 
placed block  or  rod  spoils  the  sequence  of  form 
and  number  in  the  tower  or  the  stairs.  After 
being  shown  the  perfect  way  of  carrying  on  each 
of  these  exercises,  the  child  experiments  with  them 


106      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

alone.  He  discovers  that  the  material  admits  of 
two  possibilities :  error  and  success.  The  success 
possibility  is  the  greater,  however;  it  is  easier  to 
drop  a  solid  inset  into  an  opening  that  fits  than 
to  endeavor  to  crush  it  into  a  hole  that  is  too 
small.  So,  by  persistent  and  repeated  experi- 
ment, the  child  attains  a  habit  of  correcting  his 
own  mistakes.  This  habit  he  carries  over  into  the 
other  willed  activities  of  his  life. 

The  Montessori  method  presents  three  steps  in 
the  home  development  of  the  child's  will.  First, 
we  must  give  our  children  as  wide  and  free  an 
opportunity  as  possible  to  be  active,  especially 
with  their  hands,  along  those  lines  which  will  lead 
to  muscular  control.  Second,  we  must  not  inter- 
fere with  a  little  child's  concentrated  occupation 
through  play.  Last,  whatever  task  we  set  for  him 
to  do,  we  must  outline  a  right  way  in  which  it 
should  be  accomplished  and  encourage  him  to  cor- 
rect his  own  errors  in  it. 

A  mother  said  to  me  recently,  "  I  keep  the  chil- 
dren in  bibs  still,  although  I  suppose  they  have 
outgrown  them.  We  can't  have  our  meals  delayed 
while  we  wait  for  three  active  youngsters  to  fold 
napkins." 


DIRECTING   THE    WILL          107 

Dr.  Montessori  would  have  patiently  and  pains- 
takingly instituted  the  napkin  habit,  realizing  that 
in  even  so  simple  and  homely  an  operation  as  fold- 
ing a  square  of  linen  neatly  lie  undreamed  possi- 
bilities of  strengthening  a  child's  will. 


ANDREA'S  LILY 

The  Nature-Training  of  the  Method 

"  IF  you  put  it  to  sleep  in  the  good  brown 
earth,  Andrea,  if  you  tend  it  and  wait  with  pa- 
tience," explained  the  Signorina,  "  you  will  see  a 
wonder." 

Andrea  turned  the  brown  lump  over  and  over 
in  his  hand.  He  rubbed  it  on  the  sleeve  of  his 
apron.  He  held  it  up  to  the  light.  It  had  no 
appearance  of  wonder;  it  was  cold,  it  did  not 
shine,  it  would  not  reflect  the  light.  Did  the 
Signorina,  after  all,  know,  Andrea  wondered,  as 
his  big,  wistful  eyes  looked  out  from  the  warm 
cheerfulness  of  the  schoolroom  to  the  chill,  wind- 
swept spaces  of  the  Convent  garden.  Memories 
of  great  banks  of  gold  daisies,  roses  so  heavy 
with  crimson  petals  that  they  bent  as  low  as  the 
little  green  winding  paths,  winds  sweet  with  per- 
fume of  the  grape  filled  Andrea's  imagination. 
These  had  made  the  garden  of  the  Children's 
House  yesterday.  But  how  different  it  was  to-day ! 
108 


NATURE-TRAINING  109 

Could  the  dead  bulb  which  was  his,  now,  to  tend, 
to  watch,  to  believe  in,  make  for  itself  life  and 
bloom  ? 

Andrea,  the  matter-of-fact  little  man  of  four, 
was  skeptical. 

"  Of  what  use  is  it  to  plant?  "  he  queried. 

"  Try  it !  I  will  help  you  dig  a  hole,"  Bruno, 
the  helpful,  volunteered. 

"  We  will  not  let  any  child  take  it  out  of  its 
bed;  we  will  protect  it  for  you,  Andrea,"  assured 
Piccola,  flashing  eyes  full  of  the  fire  of  anticipated 
battle. 

"  Cover  it  carefully  with  earth,  and  only  be  pa- 
tient," reiterated  the  Signorina.  "  Believe  me.  It 
will  make  for  you  a  surprise." 

It  was  a  momentous  morning  that  marked  An- 
drea's planting.  His  fat  fingers,  holding  the 
trowel,  trembled.  Like  a  circle  of  small  acolytes, 
Bruno,  Little  Brother,  Piccola,  and  the  rest,  white 
aprons  fluttering  in  the  wind,  watched  the  sacrifice. 
Covered  out  of  vision  in  its  winter  grave,  the  bulb 
disappeared  and  the  children,  now  almost  as 
skeptical  as  Andrea  of  its  possible  germ  of  life, 
ran  back  to  their  work  in  the  schoolroom.  All, 
save  Andrea. 


110      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

His  baby  hands,  like  two  warm,  brown  leaves, 
fluttered  over  the  earth  prison  of  his  bulb.  Kneel- 
ing down  on  the  frosty  path,  he  bent  low,  listen- 
ing, as  if  he  hoped  that  he  might  perhaps  hear 
the  groping  of  new  roots.  It  was  all  very  cold, 
and  perfectly  still  about  the  place  where  he  had 
buried  his  little  dead  hope,  but  Andrea  whispered 
to  it: 

"  I  will  wait,"  he  promised. 

The  bleak  Roman  winter  spent  its  chill  days. 
Flurries  of  snow  shrouded  the  garden  and  the 
wide  doors  of  the  Convent,  open  so  many  days  of 
the  year,  were  closed.  Andrea  did  not  forget  his 
bulb,  though.  Every  day  he  ran  out  to  the  place 
where  he  had  buried  it,  eagerly  watching  for  the 
slim  green  fingers  he  had  been  told  would  push 
their  way  through  the  frosty  earth.  As  the  weeks 
drifted  by,  and  while  the  garden  was  still  bare,  a 
strange  thing  happened  to  the  soul  of  little 
Andrea.  The  patience  that  was  necessary  for 
keeping  alive  his  hope  in  the  brown  bulb  began  to 
show  itself  in  other  ways. 

"  Andrea  no  longer  frowns  when  the  little 
brother  of  Bruno  takes  away  his  letters,"  the 
Signorina  exclaimed.  "  Instead,  he  goes  to  the 


NATURE-TRAINING  111 

cabinet  and  fetches  a  buttoning  frame,  offering 
it  to  the  little  one  instead  of  the  letters  for  which 
he  is  not  ready." 

In  other  ways  Andrea  proved  his  patience.  A 
bit  of  drawing  that  he  had  finished,  hastily,  a 
month  before  and  with  crooked  lines,  now  held 
him  concentrated  for  an  hour,  and  was  completed 
with  exquisite  neatness  and  exact  contour  of  line. 
At  the  midday  meal  of  the  children  Andrea  did  not, 
as  formerly,  beg  to  be  served  first,  nor  did  he 
open  his  little  green  basket  of  luncheon  before 
the  other  children.  It  was  as  if  the  slow- 
growing  bulb  which  was  working  its  sure  way 
up  through  the  bare  ground  to  the  sun  had 
its  counterpart  in  the  unfolding  root  of  pa- 
tience it  had  planted  in  the  heart  of  a  little 
child. 

After  a  little,  the  winter  melted  into  a  spring 
of  yellow  lilies  and  long  sunny  noons  and  laughter 
at  all  the  gray  street  corners.  Andrea  came 
earlier  than  the  other  little  ones  to  the  Children's 
House  each  morning,  that  he  might  spend  a  half 
hour  with  his  little  green  watering  pot  in  the 
garden.  He  met  Bruno  and  Piccola  with  an  air 
of  assurance  that  set  him  apart  from  them.  He 


112      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

held  his  head  very  high  in  those  days  because  of 
realized  hope  which  he  had  made  his  own. 

"  Andrea  is  our  little  gardener,"  the  children 
said  to  each  other,  watching  his  triumph. 

Then  came  a  visitor's  morning  at  the  Children's 
House  of  the  Via  Giusti  Convent.  The  children's 
greatest  happiness  was  to  welcome  these  grown-up 
friends  who  came  to  learn  of  the  little  ones  the 
truths  of  life.  Among  the  throng  of  students, 
tourists,  curiosity  seekers,  earnest  thinkers,  a 
woman  whom  the  children  knew  entered  and  slipped 
into  a  waiting  chair.  She  had  been  during  the 
winter  a  frequent  visitor,  quiet,  sympathetic,  with 
deep,  smiling  eyes.  Then  she  had  not  come  to 
the  Children's  House  for  many  days. 

But  they  remembered  her  still.  As  flowers  turn 
to  meet  the  sun,  they  twined  about  her,  feeling 
her  soft,  strong  hands,  touching  with  eager  fin- 
ger tips  the  dull,  clinging  garment  that  draped 
her.  Ah,  they  drew  back,  consulting  together  in 
little  questioning  groups. 

"  She  wears  now  a  black  dress." 

"  Her  eyes  are  full  of  sorrow,"  they  said. 

"  The  Signorina  tells  us  that,  now,  she  has  no 
madre" 


NATURE-TRAINING  113 

Andrea,  apart  from  the  others,  listened,  sym- 
pathetic, wondering.  Sorrow  should  be  replaced 
by  happiness,  of  this  he  was  quite  sure.  Was 
not  the  most  unhappy  child  in  the  Children's 
House  the  one  most  loved,  most  helped  by  his 
Signorina?  Had  he  anything  to  offer  this  friend 
that  would  give  her  joy?  He  ran  to  her,  grasped 
her  hand  in  his  ;  dragged  her  from  her  chair,  across 
the  threshold,  into  a  luring  little  green  path  dented 
with  many  child  footprints. 

"  See  !  "  he  exclaimed.     "  I  waited." 

Where  Andrea  had  laid  away  his  hope,  a  tall, 
straight  stalk  of  heavily  odorous  lily  bloom 
pointed  skyward.  The  earth  that  it  had  scat- 
tered in  its  bulb-bursting  still  surrounded  the 
strong,  green  stalk.  It  was  a  chalice  of  the  spring, 
a  symbol  of  life  that  is  eternal. 

"  I  planted  it  and  I  waited,"  Andrea  repeated. 
"  All  the  children  waited  with  me. 

"  It  blooms,"  he  finished,  laughing  up  into  the 
joyful  eyes  that  smiled  back,  comforted,  into  his. 

Life  is  a  phenomenon  in  which  no  force  is  wasted 
and  out  of  whose  apparent  death  there  continually 
confronts  us  the  wonder  of  new  life.  Some  of  us 
are  blind  to  the  lessons  Nature  teaches,  but  little 


114      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

children  may  be  led  to  feel  nature  facts  that  spell 
for  them  faith  and  hope  and  sympathy  for  all 
time. 

Dr.  Montessori  tells  us  the  place  of  nature  in 
education.  We  will  put  the  planting  and  tending 
of  little  gardens,  which  are  the  child's  own,  above 
the  place  which  such  work  has  held,  formerly,  as 
a  part  of  manual  education.  We  will  make  gar- 
dening a  means  of  leading  our  little  ones  to  ob- 
serve the  phenomena  of  life,  to  be  patient  in  wait- 
ing for  that  life  to  manifest  itself,  and  to  be  very 
sure  in  the  hope  that  fruition  will  come. 

Does  your  little  Andrea,  your  child  who  has 
come  to  you  with  such  a  divine  curiosity  about 
life  and  so  quick  a  sense  to  feel  it,  have  a  chance 
to  be,  himself,  a  part  of  the  miracle  by  helping 
something  to  grow?  To  plant  a  seed,  to  surround 
it  with  all  the  best  conditions  for  growth,  to 
tend  it,  to  wait  for  its  flowering — this  is  Mon- 
tessori development  possible  for  any  child. 

Many  of  us  feel  that  we  are  bringing  our  little 
ones  into  a  nearness  with  nature  when  we  show 
them  beautiful  pictures  of  flowers,  lead  them  to 
exquisite  gardens  in  which  they  must  not  pick  the 
flowers,  or  take  them  to  walk  in  our  parks.  This 


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NATURE-TRAINING  115 

is  not  making  nature  a  force  in  the  life  of  a  child 
as  Dr.  Montessori  would  have  us.  Children  must 
touch  and  feel  and  act  to  know.  The  flower  that 
is  too  beautiful  for  little  fingers  to  gracefully  pick 
and  give  to  a  friend  as  an  offering  of  love  should 
have  no  place  in  our  gardens.  The  grass  that  is 
too  soft  to  bear  the  prints  of  little  feet  is  not 
the  right  kind  of  grass  for  an  American  park. 

To  plant  a  bean  in  a  clay  pot  that  stands  on 
a  city  window  sill;  to  tend  the  plant  that  grows 
from  the  seed,  saying  with  surety,  "  Some  day 
there  will  be  beans  on  this  plant,"  means  more  to 
a  child  than  to  be  told  the  life  story  of  an  orchid. 
It  is  the  difference  between  thinking  and  feeling. 

A  rake,  a  shovel,  a  little  basket,  a  cart,  a  wa- 
tering pot — these  are  all  Montessori  didactic  ma- 
terials that  any  child  in  any  home  may  have.  A 
flower  pot  in  a  window,  a  window  box,  a  tiny  plot 
of  earth  in  which  to  plant,  one  of  these  is  possible 
for  each  of  our  children,  and  the  flowers  and  fruits 
that  result  from  the  nurture  of  child  hands  mean, 
for  the  child,  flowers  and  fruits  of  the  spirit. 

The  world  of  every  day  is  full  of  gardens  for 
our  children  to  plant,  and  helpless,  dumb  animals 
to  be  fed  and  cared  for  by  child  hands.  It  has 


116      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

been  so  easy  for  us  to  do  these  things  ourselves 
that  we  have  not  stopped  to  think  what  it  means 
in  the  life  of  a  child  to  have  helped  something  to 
live. 

There  is  the  bare  seed,  without  shape  or  body 
or  hint  of  promise.  There  is  the  green,  groping 
plant  that  appears.  Then  comes  the  sure  bloom- 
ing that  rewards  child  patience.  Some  plants  are 
more  slow  to  sprout  than  others;  there  is  the 
fruit  tree  that  did  not  sprout  in  the  child's  life  but 
whose  pink  blooms  he  now  sees.  So  it  may  be 
that  the  good  hope  planted  in  his  own  heart  while 
he  is  still  a  little  fellow  may  not  fructify  for  a 
long  time,  but  he  will  wait,  with  patience  and  faith. 

Caring  for  plants  and  dumb  animals  has  further 
life  application  for  children.  We  continually 
serve  our  little  ones.  Because  we  love  them,  we 
do  too  much  for  children ;  we  take  from  their  eager 
hands  all  works  of  service  for  others  which  would 
do  much  to  develop  the  latent  sympathy  that 
buds  in  every  child's  heart,  only  waiting  for  the 
slightest  stimulus  which  will  make  it  expand  and 
develop. 

Your  child  needs  one  plant  that  is  dependent 
for  life  upon  his  care.  He  needs  one  pet  that 


To  feel  that  something  is  dependent  upon  him  for  care 
and  food  helps  a  child  to  reverence  life. 


NATURE-TRAINING  117 

demands  his  daily  forethought  and  vigilance  to 
safeguard  its  life.  As  he  waters  the  plant,  watch- 
ing it  and  providing  for  it  the  best  conditions 
of  light  and  freedom;  as  he  feeds  his  pet,  your 
child  feels  and  is  able  to  image  the  watchfulness 
of  his  father  and  mother  who  feed  and  care  for 
him,  who  gave  him  life.  He  will  form  a  habit  of 
feeling  and  helping,  and  will  grow  up  loving,  sym- 
pathetic, and  with  a  reverence  for  the  phenomena 
of  life. 

There  are  also  the  rewards  that  nature  gives 
children,  coming  as  marvelous  surprises,  unex- 
plainable  mysteries,  beyond  the  work  of  hands. 
The  little  ones  at  the  Via  Giusti  Children's  House 
in  Rome  may  be  often  seen  clustered  about  a  blos- 
som that  has  unfolded  while  they  were  at  home 
and  waits  to  greet  them  in  the  morning — so  dif- 
ferent, so  vastly  more  beautiful  than  the  tiny  seed 
which  they  sowed.  These  children  would  not  care 
for  a  crude  toy,  given  them  as  a  reward  for  their 
labors.  The  toy  can  be  explained;  it  is  made  of 
wood,  or  iron ;  it  has  no  connection  with  the  child's 
work  for  which  it  is  given  as  a  prize. 

But  here  is  a  lily,  the  reward  of  their  work, 
but  unexplainable ;  the  product  of  a  force  that  is 


118      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

miracle  working.  Its  petals  are  like  wax.  With 
their  sensitized  little  fingers  the  children  touch 
them ;  no,  they  are  not  wax.  No  one  can  tell  of 
what  texture  these  petals  are  made.  The  flower 
has  its  own  perfume,  haunting,  individual.  Andrea 
did  not  plant  those  petals,  he  did  not  smell  that 
perfume  when  he  buried  his  hope.  It  found  its 
own  body. 

So  with  the  greatest  simplicity,  Dr.  Montessori 
brings  to  children  the  truths  learned  from  the 
cultivation  of  life. 


THE  MIRACLE  OF  OLGA 

Reading  and  Writing  as  Natural  for  Your  Child 
as  Speech 

"  I  HAVE  something  strange  in  my  pocket,"  Olga 
exclaimed  to  the  group  of  little  ones  who  clus- 
tered about  her,  twittering,  poised  in  excitement 
like  a  flock  of  baby  birds. 

It  was  just  after  the  luncheon  hour  in  the  Chil- 
dren's House,  and  the  babies  filled  the  sunshiny 
paths  of  the  garden  or  loitered  in  happy  groups 
in  the  cool  stone  cloister  of  the  Convent. 

"  My  mother  told  me  the  story  of  Pinocchio, 
the  wooden  marionette,  who  had  so  many  adven- 
tures with  a  cricket  for  his  friend,  and  also  a 
fairy  with  blue  hair.  It  is  too  wonderful  a  story 
to  have  been  born  in  the  mind  of  my  mother.  She 
found  it.  I  have  it  now,  with  me  !  " 

There  was  a  breathless  hush  among  the  little 
ones.  Pairs  of  blue  and  hazel  eyes  fixed  every 
motion  of  the  little  brown  maid  in  the  bright 
119 


120      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

pink  apron.  With  slow  dignity  and  an  effect  of 
great  mystery  Olga  thrust  one  chubby  hand  into 
the  depths  of  her  pocket.  The  fingers  fumbled 
a  bit,  then  pulled  out  a  crumpled,  printed  page 
torn  from  a  book.  Dropping,  cross-legged,  to  the 
stone  floor  of  the  cloister,  Olga  unfolded  and 
spread  out  the  page  in  her  lap.  The  others  bent 
over  her  with  all  the  curiosity  and  reverence  that 
would  be  stimulated  by  a  conjurer. 

"  Here  is  the  mystery,"  Olga  announced,  indi- 
cating the  printed  words.  "  I  have  discovered  that 
this  is  the  hiding  place  of  Pinocchio.  I  have  torn 
it  out  of  the  book  that  I  may  carry  it,  always, 
in  my  pocket." 

"  Olga  will  carry  Pinocchio  in  her  pocket,"  the 
others  exclaimed  in  hushed  whispers,  scattering 
to  talk  over  the  matter.  "  Is  it  possible  that  we, 
too,  could  find  Pinocchio,  as  Olga  has,  and  carry 
him  in  our  pockets?  " 

So  it  happened  that  the  mothers  of  the  children 
of  the  Via  Giusti  School  began  to  miss  pages 
from  their  newspapers,  their  magazines,  their 
books. 

"  We  have  very  bad,  destructive  children,"  they 
decided,  not  stopping  to  question  the  reason  for 


READING   AND   WRITING       121 

their  little  ones'  sudden  interest  in  written  lan- 
guage. 

So  it  happened,  also,  that  the  directress  of  the 
school,  always  alert  to  watch  the  mind  phenomena 
of  her  children,  noticed  that  many  children  in  the 
school  had  torn  bits  of  printed  pages  hidden  in 
their  apron  pockets,  in  the  soles  of  their  shoes, 
in  their  caps.  In  the  midst  of  their  most  fas- 
cinating work,  they  would  stop,  take  out  these 
scraps  of  print,  smooth  them,  and  trace  the  letters 
with  baby  fingers. 

"  We  have  stories  with  us  all  the  time ;  Pinoc- 
chio  is  ours,"  they  said. 

"  My  little  discoverers !  "  the  far-seeing  direct- 
ress exclaimed.  "  They  are  not  wilfully  destruc- 
tive. They  are  ready,  now,  to  create  a  new  lan- 
guage that  will  carry  them  farther  than  spoken 
words  can.  Their  longings  shall  be  satisfied." 

One  morning  the  directress  gave  Olga  new  ma- 
terials with  which  to  work.  There  was  a  big, 
white  wood  box  divided  into  twenty-six  compart- 
ments, and  in  each  compartment  there  was  a  huge 
letter  of  the  alphabet  cut  from  pink  or  blue  card- 
board. The  blue  letters  were  consonants;  the 
pink  letters  were  vowels.  Seated  on  a  soft  green 


122      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

rug  on  the  floor,  Olga  spent  hours  taking  the 
letters  out  of  their  places,  piling  them  in  a  colored 
heap  of  many  fascinating  curves  and  angles,  then 
sorting  them  and  putting  each  back  in  a  compart- 
ment in  the  box. 

Sometimes,  as  Olga  worked,  the  slim  girl  di- 
rectress dropped  down  on  the  rug  beside  her. 
Picking  up  one  of  the  cardboard  letters,  she  would 
say: 

"  This  is  A,  Olga." 

"  This  is  A,"  Olga  would  repeat. 

"  Can  you  show  me  another  A  ?  "  the  directress 
would  then  ask.  And  Olga  would,  readily,  pick 
out  a  similar  letter. 

"Where  is  A,  Olga?"  was  the  last  question  in 
this  teaching  as  Olga  selected  from  the  twenty- 
six  letters  another  A.  So  the  little  maid  of  four 
years  soon  knew  all  the  letters  by  name  and  sound. 
And  presently  she  was  combining  them  to  make 
words  and  short  sentences. 

As  she  laid  together  the  letters  that  made  up 
each  word,  the  words  that  combined  to  make  sen- 
tences, the  directress  analyzed  each  word  for  her, 
phonetically.  Soon,  by  hearing  a  word,  distinctly 
pronounced,  Olga  could  select  from  her  box  of 


Building  words  with  the  movable  alphabet. 


READING   AND   WRITING       123 

pink  and  blue  symbols  which  represented  sounds 
to  her  now  those  letters  which  were  necessary  to 
spell  the  word. 

The  directress  presented  to  her  smooth 
white  cards,  on  which  were  mounted  large  black 
letters  cut  from  coarse  black  emery  cloth,  as 
rough  as  sandpaper.  These  letter  cards  Olga  held 
in  one  hand,  tracing  the  outline  of  the  letters  with 
the  fingers  of  her  other  hand  and  saturating  her 
senses  with  the  feeling  of  the  letter  shapes.  Soon, 
she  could  name  any  letter,  her  eyes  closed,  by  the 
sense  of  touch. 

At  the  same  time  that  Olga  was  learning  to  see 
and  feel  letters,  she  was  being  helped  to  the  mus- 
cular control  involved  in  writing.  Upon  a  sheet 
of  white  paper  she  laid  one  of  the  Montessori 
geometric  insets,  a  square,  and  selecting  a  brightly 
colored  pencil,  she  drew  the  outline  of  the  square 
upon  the  paper.  Then,  with  the  slanting  lines 
used  in  writing,  Olga  filled  in  the  outline  of  the 
square.  At  first,  the  lines  were  crooked,  extend- 
ing beyond  the  boundary  lines  of  the  square;  but 
as  she  repeated  the  exercise,  filling  in  with  color 
other  forms,  outlined  triangles,  rectangles,  circles, 
leaves,  flowers,  trees,  and  figures  of  children  and 


124      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

animals,  her  muscles  strengthened  and  she  could 
control  her  pencil  with  the  utmost  precision. 

Two  months  after  her  first  interest  in  a  printed 
page  had  shown  itself,  through  no  training  save 
these  sensory  and  muscle  exercises,  Olga  made  the 
miracle  of  graphic  art  her  own.  She  went  to  the 
blackboard  and  wrote  in  clear,  flowing  script:  "  I 
read,  I  write." 

Your  baby  tears  picture  books  and  magazines; 
he  leaves  great,  unbeautiful  scrawls  upon  wall 
paper,  woodwork,  and  sidewalk.  He  upsets  the 
ink  and  breaks  the  pens  in  his  father's  study.  He 
wishes  to  handle  all  the  books  upon  the  library 
shelves.  We  punish  him  for  these  acts  because  we 
think  them  wanton.  Dr.  Montessori  tells  us  that 
these  child  activities  indicate  an  instinctive  inter- 
est in  the  symbols  of  that  new  art,  human  speech, 
which  he  is  making  his  own  in  the  first  years  of 
his  life.  They  tell  us  that  we  have  made  a  mis- 
take in  not  giving  children  an  opportunity  to 
teach  themselves  to  read  and  write  at  the  same 
time  that  they  are  mastering  spoken  language. 
The  two  interests  present  themselves  simultane- 
ously in  our  little  ones.  Children  who  tear  books 
and  scribble  upon  walls  and  interfere  with  the  im- 


READING   AND   WRITING       125 

maculate  order  of  our  home  secretaries  are  not 
little  mischief  makers.  Like  Olga,  and  the  other 
babies  in  the  Children's  House,  they  are  trying  to 
make  their  own  the  story  that  you  read  them. 
Even  the  tools  of  writing  for  little  children  are 
gilded  with  the  same  air  of  mystery  that  touches 
the  untranslatable  black  print. 

The  wonder  teaching  of  Montessori,  by  means 
of  which,  after  two  or  three  months  of  preliminary 
exercises,  little  ones  "  explode  "  into  reading  and 
writing,  may  begin  at  home.  Any  watchful  mother 
may  lay  the  foundations  for  this  educational 
marvel. 

Have  you  watched  the  process  by  means  of 
which  the  little  Stranger  who  came  to  you  from 
the  unknown  masters  the  strange  speech  of  the 
home  in  which  he  found  himself? 

Are  you  helping  or  hindering  him  in  his  strug- 
gles to  make  language  his  own? 

The  beginnings  of  speech  in  the  baby  consist 
in  repetition  of  syllabic  sounds  which  he  hears  in 
his  home  environment.  His  vocal  cords  and  tongue 
educate  themselves  through  pronouncing  articu- 
late sounds.  First  come  the  labials.  Then  the 
little  one  combines  consonants  and  sounds,  saying: 


126      MONTESSORI   CHILDREN 

"  Ma-Ma.  Pa-Pa."  The  mechanism  by  means  of 
which  the  sense  of  hearing  combines  with  the  vocal 
cords  in  helping  the  two-year-old  to  speak  makes 
it  possible  for  a  child  to  learn  several  foreign 
languages  in  the  first  five  years  of  his  life. 

The  child  is  making  his  own  dictionary  in  baby- 
hood and  at  a  phenomenal  rate  of  speed. 

Dr.  Montessori  says  that  we  may  help  a  child 
to  beautifully  phonetic  speech  and  a  large  vocabu- 
lary if  we  will  eliminate  all  baby  talk  from  our 
nurseries,  and  see  that  the  little  one  hears  only 
good  models  of  speech.  Clear-cut,  carefully  pro- 
nounced words,  well-planned  and  euphonious  sen- 
tences, rhythmic  poems  and  classic  stories  read  to 
our  children,  these  will  train  the  sense  of  hearing 
and  lead  to  a  large  vocabulary  and  beautiful  pro- 
nunciation. Suppose  you  were  learning  a  foreign 
language,  wouldn't  it  discourage  you  to  have  your 
interpreter  mispronounce,  baby  talk  French  or 
German  or  Italian  to  you?  Our  babies  find  them- 
selves in  a  land  more  strange  to  them  than  any 
foreign  country  we  have  ever  visited.  We  are  their 
interpreters ;  let  us  not  put  stumbling  blocks  in 
their  road  to  language. 

Then,  sometimes  at  three  years,  four,  or  five 


.s 


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ill 

'S  i? 


READING   AND   WRITING       127 

comes  the  tearing  and  scribbling  stage.  Every 
mother  knows  it,  but  Dr.  Montessori  helps  us  to 
a  new  recognition  of  its  meaning.  It  isn't  a  devel- 
opment of  the  old  Adam  in  your  child.  It's  a 
guide  signal  for  every  mother.  It  tells  you  that 
the  intricate  human  mechanism  that  makes  up  the 
child  spirit  is  ready  to  learn  written  language 
naturally,  without  undue  nerve  strain,  if  only  the 
right  stimulus  be  offered. 

It  is  because  we  have  waited  until  the  instinctive 
interest  in  spoken  language  grows  dull  and  be- 
cause we  have  depended  upon  only  one  sense,  the 
sense  of  vision,  that  teaching  a  child  to  read  and 
write  has  not  been  the  natural,  quick  process  na- 
ture means  it  to  be. 

If  the  nursery  equipment  includes  the  movable 
alphabet  and  the  sandpaper  letters  of  the  Mon- 
tessori didactic  materials,  your  little  one,  instead 
of  tearing  letters,  may  feel  them,  his  sense  of 
touch  carrying  to  his  mind  a  telegraphic  message 
of  letter  form  that  is  registered  permanently  on 
his  brain.  After  handling  these  large,  stiff,  pink 
and  blue  letters  for  a  month  or  two,  after  tracing 
with  his  sensitized  finger  tips  the  rough  black 
letters  mounted  on  the  smooth  white  cards,  they 


128       MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

are  so  indelible  a  part  of  his  mental  life  that  they 
must  burst  forth  into  writing  without  previous 
training.  Don't  you  remember  how  your  baby  by 
fingering  his  raised  letters  on  his  alphabet-bordered 
bread-and-milk  bowl,  by  feeling  of  the  raised  let- 
ters on  his  alphabet  blocks,  by  building  words 
with  the  cut-out  wooden  letters  of  his  letter  game, 
learned  without  effort  oh  your  part  how  to  print? 
So,  by  touching  the  beautiful  script  letters  of 
Montessori,  a  child  teaches  himself  to  write. 

But  there  is  another  process  involved  in  the 
Montessori  method  of  helping  very  little  children 
to  an  early  mastery  of  reading  and  writing.  In 
the  public  schools  a  pencil  is  put  into  the  child's 
untrained  fingers  and  we  expect  him  to  use  it  in 
writing  with  no  preliminary  help  in  handling  it. 
We  couldn't  use  a  needle  in  fine  embroidery  if  we 
had  not  learned,  first,  how  to  thread  it.  We  are 
not  able  to  paint  a  picture  of  a  landscape  until 
we  learn  how  to  use  a  brush  in  outlining  perspec- 
tive. So  we  make  a  mistake  when  we  expect  that 
to  hold  a  pencil  means  to  be  able  to  write.  We 
must  help  children  to  the  muscular  control  of  this 
tool  of  writing  first.  Dr.  Montessori  tells  us  that 
drawing  precedes  writing. 


READING    AND    WRITING        129 

The  Montessori  didactic  materials  for  develop- 
ing in  children  the  muscular  control  necessary  for 
writing  include  small  wooden  tables ;  flat  metal 
forms  cut  in  various  shapes,  squares,  rectangles, 
circles,  and  triangles ;  plenty  of  white  drawing 
paper,  and  good  colored  pencils  of  the  standard 
colors  and  brown  and  black.  Laying  a  form  on  a 
piece  of  paper,  the  children  draw  its  outline. 
Removing  the  form,  they  fill  in  the  outline,  using 
long,  vertical,  parallel  lines  of  any  color  they  like, 
keeping  within  the  contour  of  the  outline.  So 
the  child  educates  his  muscles  for  writing  without 
actually  writing. 

The  little  ones  at  Rome  soon  experiment  with 
combining  these  forms  to  make  colored  borders 
and  flat  designs,  which  they  fill  in  with  their  col- 
ored pencils  in  very  harmonious  color  combina- 
tions. Later,  they  fill  in  outlined  pictures,  using 
the  same  free,  regular  pencil  strokes. 

The  Montessori  method  of  starting  reading  and 
writing  saves  time  in  most  instances.  Whether  or 
not,  however,  it  is  at  four  years  or  five  years  or 
five  and  one-half  that  the  "  explosion  "  into  written 
expression  of  thought  occurs,  the  process  by  means 
of  which  it  is  brought  about  is  sure  to  give  the 


ISO      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

child  a  firm  perceptive  basis  for  reading  and 
writing. 

Our  ordinary  method  of  teaching  reading  and 
writing  is  a  utilization  of  the  sense  of  sight,  alone. 
In  some  instances  the  children  in  the  primary 
grades  of  our  schools  begin  writing  by  a  system 
of  tracing  letters  and  words  offered  them  in  large 
script.  This  is  purely  a  muscular  process  and 
rarely  absolutely  successful,  because  it  involves 
fine  muscular  co-ordination  for  which  the  child  of 
five  or  even  six  years  is  not  ready. 

The  Montessori  sandpaper  letters  and  movable 
alphabet  offer  the  child  a  chance  to  utilize  his 
sense  of  touch  in  learning  the  symbols  of  thought. 
Formerly  we  showed  him  a  word  or  a  letter  as 
a  means  for  gaining  so  vivid  a  mental  image  of 
that  letter  that  he  would  be  able  to  recognize  it 
and  write  it.  The  method  of  Montessori  sends  a 
telegraphic  message  by  two  wires  to  the  child 
mind,  a  visual  and  a  tactile  impression.  The 
tactile  message  is  peculiarly  valuable  in  strength- 
ening the  mental  image  of  the  word  or  letter  be- 
cause of  the  fact  that  the  child  is  in  a  strong 
sensory  motor  stage  of  his  mental  development. 
To  touch  gives  him  stronger  mental  images  than 


READING   AND   WRITING       131 

to  see.  To  feel  gives  him,  also,  an  impulse  to  imi- 
tate and  to  express.  This  is  why,  after  touching 
and  naming  and  differentiating  and  recognizing 
blindfold  and  building  words  and  sentences  with 
letters,  the  Montessori  child  spontaneously  writes. 

Because  we  are  so  anxious  for  immediate  educa- 
tional results  with  our  little  ones,  the  spontaneous 
reading  and  writing  of  the  Montessori  method  has 
seemed  to  parents  one  of  its  most  important  de- 
velopments. If,  in  our  home  Montessori  experi- 
ments, children  do  not  read  and  write  very  early, 
we  are  disappointed.  We  wonder  if  the  system 
has  the  value  we  attached  to  it.  We  must  change 
this  state  of  mind. 

There  is  the  toddler  of  three  who  evinces  an 
instinctive  longing  to  read  and  write.  He  experi- 
ments with  pencil  and  paper ;  he  shows  an  interest 
in  the  home  books,  newspapers,  and  periodicals ; 
he  asks  what  the  signs  in  the  street  cars  and  on 
the  billboards  say.  There  is  also  the  child,  no  less 
promising,  but  more  interested  in  objects  than  in 
symbols,  who  does  not  show  these  manifestations 
until  the  age  of  five  and  five  and  a  half  years. 

We  must  recognize  these  signs  according  to  the 
child's  age  and  take  advantage  of  them.  The  part 


132       MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

of  the  mother  is  to  watch  for  the  dawning  of  the 
interest  in  reading  and  writing  and  to  give  the 
child  an  opportunity  to  perfect  the  physical  and 
mental  mechanism  for  it. 

Our  homes  and  the  educational  helps  to  be 
bought  for  children  now  furnish  accessory  ma- 
terial for  the  Montessori  process  of  teaching  the 
graphic  art. 

The  first  tracing  of  the  sandpaper  letters  should 
be  preceded  by  exercises  whose  object  will  be  the 
refining  of  the  tactile  sense ;  dipping  the  fingers 
into  cold,  hot,  cool,  and  lukewarm  water;  dif- 
ferentiating blindfolded  rough,  smooth,  hard,  soft 
substances ;  recognizing  with  the  finger  tips  alone 
many  different  materials,  paper,  iron,  wood,  velvet, 
cotton,  silk,  linen,  satin,  lace,  needlework,  and  pos- 
sible combinations  of  these  textiles.  These  exer- 
cises form  a  most  fascinating  game  for  the  child, 
and,  through  them,  he  brings  to  the  exercise  of 
tracing  the  sandpaper  letters  an  exquisitely  sensi- 
tized touch  which  results  in  a  clear  impression  of 
their  form. 

As  the  child  uses  the  movable  alphabet  upon 
his  play  table  or  builds  words  and  sentences  upon 
a  bright  rug  spread  out  on  the  nursery  floor,  all 


READING    AND    WRITING       133 

the  activities  of  the  home  in  which  he  has  a  part 
and  all  his  play  life  may  be  used  as  the  basis  of 
his  first  reading.  His  favorite  toys  may  be  placed 
about  him  as  he  constructs  their  names  and  little 
word  stories  about  them.  Large  colored  pictures 
of  simple  design  may  be  laid  on  the  floor  as  the 
child  combines  letters  to  spell  the  objects  con- 
tained in  them.  The  mother  may  write  in  large 
script  simple  instructions  which  the  child  may 
read  and  follow: 

"  Run  to  me." 

"  Bring  me  your  ball." 

"  Close  the  door." 

Innumerable  helps  are  to  be  procured  for  the 
drawing  by  means  of  which  Montessori  establishes 
the  muscular  control  preliminary  to  writing.  Our 
art  stores  and  kindergarten  supply  shops  offer 
beautifully  colored  crayons  and  drawing  paper 
at  nominal  cost.  Blocks,  the  tin  utensils  of  the 
kitchen,  and  box  covers  offer  geometric  surfaces 
about  which  the  child  may  draw,  if  the  drawing 
board  and  forms  of  Montessori  are  not  included  in 
the  home  equipment.  These  outlines  the  child  will 
delight  in  filling  with  color,  using  the  diagonal 
strokes  that  form  a  direct  preparation  for 


134      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

the  muscular  control  involved  in  writing.  Follow- 
ing this  coloring  of  geometric  forms  is  the  filling 
in,  similarly,  of  simple  outlined  pictures.  We  find 
such  outlined  pictures  in  large  variety  in  the  school 
and  kindergarten  supply  shops.  The  toy  dealers 
supply  books  of  really  beautiful  designs  and  pic- 
tures for  coloring.  It  is  also  possible  to  procure 
sets  of  cardboard  figures,  animals,  paper  dolls,  and 
soldiers  which  the  home  child  may  draw  around  and 
color. 

One  day,  after  having  made  his  own,  through 
the  sense  of  touch,  the  form  of  letters,  and  after 
having  learned  muscular  control  in  drawing  form, 
your  child  will  write.  How  can  he  help  it?  You 
will  have  established  artificial  conditions,  muscle 
and  sense,  similar  to  the  conditions  through  which 
he  learns  to  talk. 

The  baby  hears  speech,  and  because  heredity 
perfected  his  vocal  cords  for  reacting  upon  mental 
stimulus  of  the  sound — he  talks.  In  the  Mon- 
tessori  method,  he  feels  letters,  and  through  the 
perfecting  of  the  muscles  involved  in  reproducing 
those  letters  which  he  has  made  his  own  by  feeling 
— he  writes. 


CLARA— LITTLE  MOTHER 

The  Social  Development  of  the  Montessori  Child 

CLAEA  always  saw  me  before  I  caught  the  out- 
line of  her  cherubic  chubby  person.  She  had  con- 
stituted herself  the  little  four-year-old  hostess  of 
the  Trionfale  Children's  House.  Her  limpid 
brown  eyes  shone  with  welcome  to  a  friend  or 
stranger.  Her  lips  were  overflowing  with  sweetly 
liquid  words  of  greeting.  Her  fat  arms  reached 
out,  her  fat  legs  were  winged  with  her  friend- 
liness. 

She  was  the  motherly,  hen  type  of  child,  never 
so  full  of  joy  as  when  she  was  greeting  someone 
or  organizing  a  game  or  taking  care  of  a  child 
younger  than  herself.  An  intensely  feminine  little 
person  was  Clara,  who  would  grow  up  into  a 
kindly,  gracious  woman,  forceful  in  her  own  tact- 
ful, woman  way  if  she  were  surrounded  by  the 
right  influences  in  childhood  or 

I  very  curiously  watched  the  social  development 
of  the  chubby  little  girl  in  the  bright  pink  frock. 
135 


136      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

Little  Roman  babies  have  the  most  fascinating 
play  fancies,  I  believe,  of  any  in  the  world.  Given 
a  cart  and  a  faded  flower  or  so,  and  Otello  was 
transformed  in  a  second's  space  into  a  busy 
flower  vender  calling  his  posies  up  and  down  the 
school  yard,  offering  imaginary  bunches  and  twin- 
ing imaginary  wreaths.  A  pile  of  stones  left 
by  the  architects  in  a  corner  of  the  playground; 
Mario  was  suddenly  fired  with  the  building  zeal 
of  his  Roman  ancestors.  Gathering  a  group  of 
boys  to  help  him  carry  and  lift  the  stones,  he 
would  construct  small  models  of  the  immortal  walls 
of  the  Caesars  and  a  possible  arch  of  Titus. 

Clara  played,  too,  but  not  so  much  with  things, 
as  with  groups.  Her  play  had  the  social  quality 
so  important  in  the  all-round  development  of  the 
individual. 

She  would  gather  together  a  group  of  little  ones 
for  a  festival  procession  or  a  folk  dance,  appor- 
tioning strong  partners  for  the  weaker  ones  and 
older  ones  for  the  babies.  She  played  house  daily, 
but  in  a  different,  lavish  kind  of  way.  She  had, 
always,  eight  or  ten  make-believe  children;  found 
room  in  her  house  of  sticks  and  stones  for  the 
fruit  seller,  the  cheese  man,  the  porter,  and  a 


SOCIAL   DEVELOPMENT        137 

stray  musician  or  two.  Her  strongest  instinct 
seemed  to  be  a  collective  one.  She  wanted  to  brood. 
She  wanted  to  be,  also,  a  leader. 

The  Montessori  directress  let  Clara  very  much 
alone,  smiling  upon  and  encouraging  her  play, 
but  not  trying  to  mold  her  instincts.  If  Clara 
industriously  swept  out  her  domicile  with  a  stick, 
the  directress  did  not  run  to  her,  offering  her  a 
toy  broom.  When  Clara  was  a  little  slow  about 
going  into  the  schoolroom  when  the  out-of-door 
period  was  ended,  the  directress  did  not  fret  at 
the  little  maid.  She  realized  that  Clara  had 
merged  her  own  personality  in;  the  personalities  of 
the  group  of  children  with  whom  she  had  been 
playing.  She  had  been  so  busy  preparing  her 
imaginary  family  for  going  to  school  that  she  did 
not  heed  the  call  herself. 

How  would  the  social  instinct  so  prominent  in 
Clara  and  in  several  other  of  the  children  find  vent 
inside  the  four  walls  of  the  Children's  House,  I 
wondered?  Would  the  Montessori  system,  which 
has  for  its  basic  principle  auto-education,  this  sys- 
tem of  perfecting  the  individual  through  self-direc- 
tion, give  Clara  and  the  others  a  chance  to  de- 
velop group  activities  ? 


138      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

For  some  time  the  cool,  white  schoolroom  was 
the  scene  of  individual  work  and  personal  en- 
deavor. Otello  worked  alone  with  the  solid  insets ; 
Mario's  fascinated  fingers  sorted  colors.  Clara 
sat  on  the  floor  in  the  sunshine  and  constructed  the 
tower,  but  her  keen  eyes  followed  almost  every 
movement  of  the  other  children.  Then,  for  the 
school  was  in  its  inception  and  the  children  were 
new,  came  a  transition  period,  when  the  peace  was 
broken  by  perfectly  normal,  healthy  brawls. 
Someone  overturned  Otello's  cylinders  and  Otello 
kicked  the  offender.  Several  children  wanted  the 
same  box  of  color  spools  at  the  same  time.  The 
directress  kindly  interfered  and  gave  the  colors 
to  Clara,  who  had  been  first  upon  the  scene.  Clara 
motioned  the  crowd  to  follow  her.  Now  had  come 
her  chance.  She  organized  her  group.  She  se- 
lected a  red  spool  and  spread  out  upon  a  white 
table  its  beautiful  gradations  from  deepest  crim- 
son to  palest  rose  pink.  Then  she  offered  the 
blue  spools  to  Mario,  showing  him  how  to  grade 
the  varying  shades.  It  was  fascinating,  Mario 
thought,  to  have  Clara  for  his  little  teacher.  He 
motioned  to  several  of  the  other  children  to  join 
them.  Tables  were  drawn  up;  brown  and  golden 


SOCIAL   DEVELOPMENT        139 

heads  bent  close  together  as  the  little  ones  dab- 
bled in  the  colors,  advising,  helping,  learning  from 
each  other. 

The  directress  hovered  outside  of  the  group, 
suggesting  but  not  forcing  herself  upon  the  chil- 
dren. They  turned  to  her  when  they  needed  her, 
but  their  greatest  interest  lay  in  the  joy  and  power 
of  working  and  learning  together. 

As  one  watched  the  phenomenon  of  this  natural 
unfolding  of  the  social  instinct  in  the  method, 
there  were  daily  examples  of  its  spontaneity.  The 
children,  from  a  collection  of  units,  had  been  trans- 
formed into  a  small  community  in  which  there  were 
groups  of  workers,  some  large,  some  small,  but 
all  co-operative.  The  children  carried  on  the  sense 
exercises  and  took  bold  adventures  into  the  fields 
of  reading  and  writing  together.  The  Montessori 
directress  was  always  their  captain  and  guide,  but 
the  grouping  and  working  with  some  other  child 
or  children  was  the  result  of  childish  initiative. 

It  developed  in  this  way. 

The  children  learned  to  live  together.  They 
found  that  the  integrity  of  Clara's  group,  of 
Mario's,  or  Otello's,  was  preserved  only  if  the  in- 
dividuals in  it  gave  themselves  up  to  the  good  of 


140      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

the  whole.  It  was  pleasanter  to  move  tables  and 
chairs  softly,  to  wait  one's  turn,  and  to  avoid 
jostling  one's  neighbor.  So  kindness  and  neigh- 
borliness  and  gentleness  were  learned  by  the  chil- 
dren through  their  own  endeavor. 

The  children  learned  together.  There  were 
groups  of  various  grades  of  age  and  mental  abil- 
ity. Here  the  children  of  three  and  four  emptied 
out  an  entire  box  of  color  spools  and,  each  choos- 
ing a  color,  helped  each  other  grade.  There,  a 
trio  of  energetic  babies  slopped  in  their  basins, 
endeavoring  to  wash  each  other  to  a  common  clean- 
liness. In  a  quiet  corner  an  older  child  taught 
less  advanced  children  to  spell  with  the  movable 
alphabet  or  to  work  out  arithmetic  calculations 
with  the  rods.  This  group  learning  was  carefully 
watched  and  safeguarded  by  the  directress,  but 
she  never  forced  her  personality  upon  the  chil- 
dren. The  children,  left  to  their  own  efforts, 
found  a  stimulus  to  a  wholesome  kind  of  competi- 
tion. They  tried  to  outstrip  each  other  in  learn- 
ing, and  put  forth  more  effort  than  if  they  had 
been  urged  by  the  teacher. 

And,  best  of  all,  the  children  were  good  together. 

If  one  child  did  anything  that  interfered  with 


SOCIAL   DEVELOPMENT        141 

the  rights  of  the  others  he  was  kindly  but  effectu- 
ally isolated.  He  was  denied  nothing  save  his 
privilege  of  being  an  active,  happy  member  of  the 
child  republic.  To  be  allowed  to  go  back  to  it  was 
his  ultimate  joy. 

The  Montessori  House  of  the  Children  is  a  place 
of  more  unusual  development  of  group  activities 
among  little  children  than  we  have  realized.  There 
is  a  larger  opportunity  for  making  children  into 
little  citizens  than  in  almost  any  other  scheme  of 
education. 

We  have  thought  that  the  present  practice  of 
the  kindergarten,  in  which  group  activities  are 
organized  and  directed  by  the  kindergartner,  gives 
little  children  the  opportunity  for  the  develop- 
ment of  the  social  instinct  which  they  so  much 
need.  At  a  signal,  they  rise  and  carry  chairs, 
or  march  in  step,  or  play  a  game,  but  the  signal 
was  given  by  the  teacher.  She  directs  the  game. 
We  have  wandered  so  far  from  the  leading  of  the 
gentle  Froebel  whose  guiding  star  was  the  natural 
impulses  of  individual  children  in  his  garden  of 
little  ones. 

It  is  vastly  more  difficult  to  lead  a  number  of 
children  safely  through  a  first  transition  period, 


142      MONTESSORI   CHILDREN 

when  all  their  self-activity  turns  into  channels  of 
disorder,  than  to  check  that  disorder  by  force  of 
adult  will.  This  is  the  task  Dr.  Montessori  sets 
for  us,  however,  and  she  shows  us,  as  the  result 
of  our  patient  leading  of  the  children  into  habits 
of  self-directed  order,  her  peaceful,  industrious 
Houses  of  the  Children.  Like  a  hive  of  bees,  the 
little  ones  swarm  in  the  flowering  of  their  interests. 
They  are  intent  upon  community  welfare. 

The  problem  of  helping  a  child  to  be  a  perfect 
social  unit  is  as  pressing  a  problem  for  the  home 
as  for  the  school.  We  are  following  the  letter 
and  not  the  spirit  of  Montessori  when  we  offer 
a  home  child  the  intellectual  stimulus  of  her  di- 
dactic apparatus  and  deny  him  companionship  in 
the  use  of  it.  It  is  eye-opening  for  a  child  to  so 
learn  form  that  he  can  detect  slight  variation  of 
outline  and  is  able  to  perceive  the  beautiful  com- 
bination of  lines  which  make  a  cathedral  or  an 
arch.  It  is  soul-opening  for  this  same  child  to 
help  another  child  to  a  perception  of  this  beauty. 

The  three  periods  of  the  spontaneous  develop- 
ing of  the  Montessori  children  into  collective  activ- 
ity, as  I  observed  them,  have  an  even  more  direct 
bearing  upon  the  home.  Left  alone,  offered  the 


SOCIAL    DEVELOPMENT         143 

scientific  apparatus  for  mental,  moral,  and  phys- 
ical growth,  the  Montessori  children  make  these 
important  social  adjustments. 

They  learn  to  live  together. 

They  learn  together. 

They  are  good  together. 

A  great  deal  is  involved  in  the  development  of 
each  of  these  adjustments.  We  must  study  the 
method  of  Montessori  by  means  of  which  success 
in  group  activity  is  made  spontaneous. 

To  say  to  a  child,  "  You  must  be  polite.  You 
mustn't  be  rude.  It  is  ugly  to  be  clumsy.  It 
isn't  nice  to  be  selfish,"  was  the  part  of  the  older 
decalogue  in  child-training.  To  teach  a  child 
by  careful  physical  and  rhythmic  exercise  and 
through  simple  acts  of  home  helpfulness,  so  that 
he  is  naturally  graceful  and  courtceous,  is  the 
Montessori  way.  To  provide  him  with  play  or 
educational  materials  which  have  greater  possibili- 
ties of  interest  if  shared — blocks,  games,  handi- 
craft materials — accomplishes  unselfishness.  Such 
community  play  as  is  found  in  imitating  the  ac- 
tivities of  the  childhood  of  the  race — digging, 
cooking,  collecting,  all  kinds  of  building,  trade 
plays,  weaving,  gardening  in  groups,  and  camp- 


144      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

ing — is  valuable  because  it  helps  children  to  merge 
their  personalities  in  the  interests  and  life  of  a 
group.  The  center  of  these  child  activities  is 
child  interest,  not  adult  pressure. 

Dr.  Montessori  makes  it  possible  for  little  chil- 
dren to  learn  together,  not  according  to  schedule, 
but  in  line  with  child  interest. 

A  mother  wrote  me  at  great  length  and  anx- 
iously in  regard  to  what  seemed  to  her  a  little 
son's  lack  of  adaptability  to  the  home  use  of  the 
Montessori  didactic  apparatus.  The  boy  had  toys, 
books,  colored  pencils,  blocks ;  he  was  endowed 
with  a  vital  interest  in  the  world  about  him  and 
an  alert  mind,  but  he  refused  to  play  alone.  He 
preferred  playing  in  the  street  with  a  group  of 
other  children,  their  only  play  material  being  peb- 
bles, sand,  or  bricks,  to  playing  at  home  with  his 
own  beautiful  equipment. 

"  How  can  I  persuade  Harold  to  work  alone 
with  the  Montessori  apparatus?"  his  mother 
queried. 

It  was  important  for  this  child  and  for  all 
children  not  to  work  alone.  Any  child  will  make 
greater  educational  strides  if  the  stimulus  of  other 
child  minds  helps  his  intellectual  growth. 


SOCIAL   DEVELOPMENT        145 

To  set  a  group  of  children  of  different  heredity, 
different  mental  and  emotional  development,  and 
different  interests  the  same  task  is  not  only  futile 
but  dangerous.  It  is  apt  to  mold  their  plastic 
minds  to  one  line  of  thinking,  is  bound  to  make 
them  slaves  of  authority  instead  of  free  person- 
alities. But  to  offer  a  group  of  children  the  tools 
of  knowledge  as  exemplified  in  the  Montessori  di- 
dactic materials  and  give  them  the  opportunity 
to  gather  in  selected,  interested  groups  for  com- 
petitive research  and  for  helping  where  help  is 
needed  is  the  most  fruitful  kind  of  learning. 

This  may  be  brought  about  in  any  home  where 
a  few  children  from  three  to  four  or  five  years 
of  age  meet  regularly  under  the  same  conditions 
for  intellectual  development  that  exist  in  the  Chil- 
dren's Houses.  Older  children  may  be  formed  into 
a  neighborhood  home  study  club.  Released  from 
the  bondage  of  the  iron  curriculum,  they  may  find 
in  this  club  an  opportunity  for  original  research 
along  those  intellectual  lines  which  interest  them 
most;  nature,  the  practical  application  of  mathe- 
matics in  measuring  and  constructing  toys,  fur- 
ther study  of  history  and  literature  through  story- 
telling, making  and  dressing  dolls  to  illustrate  his- 


146      MONTESSORI   CHILDREN 

torical  characters,  and  the  writing  and  dramatiz- 
ing of  simple  plays. 

As  a  further  development  of  the  Montessori 
group  activities  we  see,  in  imagination,  in  every 
community  a  municipal  Children's  House.  Here, 
children  of  all  classes,  ages,  and  degrees  of  intel- 
lectual growth  might  meet,  freely  selecting  from 
a  large  variety  of  materials  for  mental  and  con- 
structive development  those  which  they  most  need. 
Also,  we  see  them  selecting  their  own  social  plane, 
finding  help  and  inspiration  in  collective  work  with 
other  children.  In  this  municipal  Children's  House 
we  would  find  groups  of  child  artisans,  fashioning 
boards  and  molding  bricks  to  make  the  buildings 
for  a  toy  village.  There  would  be  little  sculptors 
and  painters,  and  perhaps  a  child  poet  or  dram- 
atist. We  would  see  small  modistes  and  milliners 
learning,  through  designing  doll  costumes,  the 
finger  deftness  and  artistic  sense  which  come  from 
combining  beautiful  colors  and  textiles.  Such  a 
Children's  House  would  have  its  own  kitchen, 
where  the  children  could  study  foodstuffs  and 
cook  and  serve  simple  meals.  Music  would  be  a 
development  of  the  group  activities.  This  would 
constitute  a  laboratory  for  the  most  fruitful  kind 


SOCIAL   DEVELOPMENT        147 

of  child  study  on  the  part  of  physicians,  psy- 
chologists, teachers,  and  parents,  because  child 
growth  under  these  conditions  would  be  quite  spon- 
taneous and  along  natural  interest  lines. 

The  last  phase  of  Montessori  collective  work  is 
seen  as  a  kind  of  flowering.  After  children  learn 
how  to  live  together,  after  they  have  worked  out 
intellectual  problems  together,  they  are  suddenly 
discovered  as  being  very  kindly  disposed  toward 
each  other.  It  is  as  if  the  ultimate  development  of 
co-operation  were  the  elimination  of  war. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  say  to  a  group  of  Mon- 
tessori children,  "  Be  good."  They  could  not  be 
otherwise  than  good. 


PICCOLA— LITTLE  HOME  MAKER 

The  Helpfulness  of  the  Montessori  Child 

THE  visitor  to  a  Montessori  school  in  Rome  is 
faced  by  an  anomaly. 

Piccola,  the  emotional,  eager  little  Italian  girl 
of  five  years,  who  is  more  difficult  to  control  at 
home  than  even  the  average  American  child,  is 
seen  to  be  a  self-controlled,  useful  member  of  a 
child  republic.  Piccola's  first  work  of  the  morn- 
ing is  to  find  her  own  pink  apron  that  hangs  on 
a  peg  on  the  wall,  and  button  herself  into  it  with 
patient  perseverance.  If  the  younger  children 
have  difficulty  putting  on  their  aprons,  Piccola 
will  patiently  help  them.  Her  next  activity  is, 
also,  along  lines  of  helpfulness.  She  looks  about 
the  wide  spaces  of  the  big  room,  where  low  white 
tables  and  chairs,  growing  ivy  plants,  and  plain 
gray  wall  make  a  beautiful  color  scheme,  to  de- 
termine if  there  is  anything  she, — wee  Piccola, 
— may  do  to  help  this  beauty.  Ah,  Piccola  sees 
a  speck  of  dust  in  one  corner  of  the  white  stone 
148 


HELPFULNESS  149 

floor.  Darting  to  the  outer  room,  where  the 
children  remove  and  hang  their  wraps  and  wash 
their  hands  before  school,  Piccola  seizes  a  red 
broom  that  is  just  the  right  length  for  her  chubby 
arms  to  handle  easily  and  a  shining  little  tin  dust- 
pan. Hastening  back,  she  brushes  up  the  dust. 
Then  she  waters  the  ivy  with  a  small  green  water- 
ing pot,  fetches  a  white  basin  and  a  little  white 
scrubbing  brush,  and  slops  gayly  in  an  energetic 
attempt  to  wash  off  the  tables.  Last,  she  takes 
some  of  the  soft  green  and  gray  rugs  that  the 
children  use  for  working  on  when  they  sit  on  the 
floor,  and  beats  them  in  the  garden  with  much 
energy. 

The  other  children  have  come,  now,  and  having 
selected  their  materials  from  the  white  cupboards 
that  line  the  wall,  are  busily  at  work.  Piccola, 
too,  is  busy,  piling  pink  blocks  in  orderly  fashion, 
one  upon  the  other.  Her  active  mind  is  busy, 
though,  along  another  line  as  well;  she  watches 
the  other  little  ones  furtively  to  see  if  there  is 
anything  which  she  can  do  to  help  them.  Bruno 
drops  his  color  spools;  Piccola  runs  to  help  him 
gather  them  up  in  his  apron.  Little  Brother  tum- 
bles down  in  a  trip  from  his  table  to  the  material 


150      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

cupboard;  Piccola  helps  him  to  balance  himself 
again  on  his  fat  legs,  and,  winding  two  tender 
little  brown  arms  about  him,  she  steers  him  in 
safety  on  his  way. 

The  hour  for  the  midday  luncheon  comes.  Pic- 
cola  daintily  helps  to  spread  the  white  luncheon 
cloths,  to  lay  the  spoons  in  regular  order  at  each 
child's  place,  to  sort  and  place  the  bright  baskets 
in  which  the  children  have  brought  their  sand- 
wiches and  fruit.  Not  until  all  the  others  are 
served  does  Piccola  slip  into  her  own  empty  place 
and  partake  of  her  own  luncheon. 

Piccola's  mother  marvels  at  the  change  that  has 
been  wrought  in  Piccola  by  a  few  months  in  the 
Montessori  House  of  the  Children.  She  reports 
her  observations  to  the  Montessori  directress  who 
has  Piccola's  education  in  charge. 

"  Piccola  dusts  the  home  now,  without  my  bid- 
ding. 

"  She  picks  up  her  dolls  and  her  toys  when 
she  has  finished  playing  with  them. 

"  She  helps  me  lay  the  table  for  the  noon  meal. 

"  How  did  you  teach  these  things  to  my  way- 
ward little  Piccola,  Signorina?  " 

It  is  the  query  of  the  American  mother  who 


HELPFULNESS  151 

finds  her  little  one  who  has  spent  a  day  in  a  good 
Montessori  school  more  helpful  in  the  home  than 
before. 

She  also  asks  herself: 

"  How  may  I  teach  helpfulness  to  my 
child?" 

Dr.  Montessori  has  discovered  for  us  the  marvel 
that  to  bring  helpfulness  to  a  very  little  child 
is  not  so  much  a  matter  of  teaching  as  of  fostering. 
She  shows  us  the  instinct  to  help  which  manifests 
itself  in  the  very  little  child  which  we  must  de- 
tect, watch,  and  foster  until  we  form  a  habit  of 
usefulness  in  children.  After  all,  to  be  useful  to 
oneself  and  to  others  is  the  greatest  value  of  edu- 
cation for  life.  Dr.  Montessori  puts  this  educa- 
tion for  utility  on  a  very  high  plane. 

The  mother  who  carefully  observes  and  analyzes 
all  the  acts  of  the  child  of  two  and  a  half  or 
three  years  of  age  will  discover  that  the  baby 
has  a  great  desire  to  be  busy,  continually,  and 
in  imitation  of  his  mother's  busy-ness  about  the 
home.  He  handles  with  the  greatest  eagerness  and 
interest  his  shoes,  his  father's  neckties,  his  mother's 
brush  and  comb,  the  family  silver,  the  kitchen 
utensils,  the  door  latches  and  knobs,  the  window 


152      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

fastenings.  He  is  more  interested  in  the  tools  of 
grown-up  housekeeping  than  he  is  in  his  toys. 
Why  is  this? 

A  baby  of  twenty  months  spent  an  entire  morn- 
ing collecting  all  the  shoes  he  could  find  in  his 
mother's  room  and  carrying  them  about  from  one 
room  to  another.  He  climbed  up  in  a  chair  and 
pulled  a  button  hook  off  a  dressing  table.  His 
mother  substituted  his  dolls,  his  rubber  toys,  a 
ball  for  these,  but  the  baby  refused  them.  Finally 
his  mother  snatched  away  the  huge  boot  of  his 
father's,  which  he  was  lovingly  tugging  about 
from  room  to  room  and  slapped  his  hands  be- 
cause he  cried  at  giving  it  up.  The  little  man 
cried  again,  and  struggled  against  the  brutal 
force  of  his  mother,  who  held  him  tightly 
in  her  lap  and  changed  his  shoes  for  going 
out  in  the  afternoon.  Again  his  hands  were 
slapped. 

The  baby  had  not  been  in  the  least  naughty. 
He  wanted  to  learn  how  to  button  his  own  shoes 
and  his  mother  couldn't  understand  this  longing 
which  he  had  to  express  in  action,  having  no  words 
with  which  to  explain  himself. 

Nearly  all  the  instincts  of  babyhood  are  right 


HELPFULNESS  153 

instincts,  leading  to  good  conduct.  The  child's 
first  longing  is  to  be  able  to  fit  himself  to  his  en- 
vironment, and  this  means  that  he  must  learn  to 
handle  those  objects  and  do  those  things  which 
he  sees  his  family  doing.  The  average  American 
child  grows  up  rather  helpless  and  useless  when  it 
comes  to  making  social  adjustments,  because  we 
continually  interfere  with  his  first  attempts  to  be 
useful.  We  do  for  him  those  acts  of  utility  which 
he  should  learn  himself,  very  early,  while  he  is 
still  interested  in  them. 

It  is  undoubtedly  less  time-taking  to  put  on  a 
small  boy's  shoes,  button  and  lace  them  for  him, 
button  his  under  and  outer  clothes,  to  tie  his  neck- 
tie, and  put  on  his  rubbers,  than  to  slowly  and 
patiently  teach  him  to  dress  himself.  To  bathe  a 
child  and  brush  and  comb  his  hair  is  simpler  than 
to  allow  the  baby  to  splash  in  water  and  revel 
in  soapsuds,  as  he  must  in  learning  the  intricate 
movements  necessary  for  keeping  himself  tidy. 
We  wish  to  preserve,  also,  the  immaculate  order 
of  our  neat  bathrooms. 

We  like  to  open  and  close  doors  for  the  tod- 
dler; it  is  our  privilege  of  service,  we  feel.  We 
prefer  to  lay  the  table  ourselves,  and  keep  our 


154      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

spotless  kitchens  free  of  child  finger  marks.  What 
about  the  baby,  though,  who  finds  his  attempts 
to  make  himself  useful  thwarted  at  every  turn 
until  he  forms  the  habit  of  being  waited  on?  This 
is  a  wrecking  habit  for  childhood;  it  is,  also,  a 
habit  that  leads  to  our  present  extravagantly  high 
cost  of  adult  living.  The  little  child  who  expects 
to  be  continually  waited  on  is  going  to  grow  up 
into  a  man  or  woman  who  will  expect  to  be  waited 
on  through  life.  Service  is  what  doubles  the 
grocer's,  the  butcher's,  the  landlord's,  the  shop- 
keeper's bills. 

The  useful  helpfulness  of  the  Montessori-trained 
child  is  easily  explained. 

The  Montessori  schoolroom  is  so  planned  that 
there  is  nothing  which  a  child  can  hurt  and  a  good 
deal  that  he  can  help  by  his  first  clumsy,  baby 
attempts  to  be  useful  to  himself  and  to  others  with 
his  hands.  The  children  are  free  to  move  about 
as  much  as  they  like,  changing  the  position  of  the 
light  little  chairs  and  tables,  opening  and  closing 
the  doors  that  lead  into  the  garden,  unrolling  and 
then  rolling  up  again  the  rugs,  putting  away  the 
didactic  materials  in  the  cupboards  after  they  are 
through  with  them,  washing  the  tables  and  black- 


HELPFULNESS  155 

boards,  caring  for  plants  and  animals,  and  carry- 
ing on  countless  other  activities  that  bring  about 
hand  and  eye  training. 

The  children  learn,  also,  all  the  intricate  activi- 
ties involved  in  the  care  of  their  bodies.  They 
wash  their  faces  and  hands,  brush  their  hair,  clean 
their  finger  nails,  black  their  shoes,  put  on  and 
take  off  their  aprons.  The  dressing  frames  that 
are  included  in  the  Montessori  didactic  materials 
include  all  the  different  fastenings  of  a  child's 
clothing;  buttoning  on  red  flannel,  buttoning  on 
leather,  buttoning  on  drill  with  tapes,  lacing  on 
cloth  and  on  leather,  fastening  hooks  and  eyes  and 
snaps,  and  tying  bow  knots. 

It  is  quite  amazing  to  see  the  eagerness  with 
which  the  Montessori  children  attack  these  very 
universal  activities  of  everyday  life.  The  skill 
they  obtain  in  them  proves  the  truth  of  Dr.  Mon- 
tessori's  words : 

"  We  habitually  serve  children.  This  is  not 
only  an  act  of  servility  toward  them,  but  it  is  dan- 
gerous because  it  tends  to  suffocate  their  useful, 
spontaneous  activity.  We  are  inclined  to  believe 
that  children  are  like  puppets,  and  we  wash  them 
and  feed  them  as  if  they  were  dolls.  We  do  not 


156      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

stop  to  think  that  the  child  who  does  not  do, 
does  not  know  how  to  do. 

"  Our  duty  toward  children  is,  in  every  case, 
that  of  helping  them  to  make  a  conquest  of  such 
useful  acts  as  nature  intended  man  to  perform 
for  himself.  The  mother  who  feeds  her  child  with- 
out making  the  slightest  effort  to  teach  him  to  hold 
and  use  a  spoon  for  himself  is  not  a  good  mother. 
She  offends  the  fundamental,  human  dignity  of 
her  son, — she  treats  him  as  if  he  were  a  doll.  In- 
stead, he  is  a  man,  confided  for  a  time  by  nature 
to  her  care." 

There  are  certain  phases  of  the  Montessori 
method  which  a  mother  cannot  apply  in  her  home 
because  she  has  not  the  preliminary  training  and 
the  necessary  teaching  skill.  There  is  not  a  single 
activity  of  the  Montessori  training  for  personal 
and  community  usefulness  of  the  individual  as 
carried  out  in  the  Montessori  school  that  may  not 
be  practiced  in  any  home.  The  Montessori  school- 
room is  a  working  duplicate  of  the  best  conditions 
which  should  exist  in  every  home  where  there  is 
a  baby.  It  is  significant  that  nations  have 
been  aroused  by  the  education  miracles  wrought 
in  the  Roman  Children's  Houses.  What,  pray, 


HELPFULNESS  157 

is  the  matter  with  the  American  children's 
houses  ? 

The  home  is  a  big  workshop  for  turning  out 
child  cosmopolites,  small  world  citizens  who  will 
grow  up  into  useful  men  and  women.  In  the  home 
the  child  may  learn  how  to  care  for  his  body,  how 
to  care  for  pets,  plants,  and  all  the  things  that 
combine  to  fill  the  tool  box  of  everyday  living. 
Here  the  child  may  learn  that  consideration  for 
others  which  will  help  him  to  be  kind,  quiet,  un- 
selfish, and  polite.  Here,  also,  he  may  take  a 
small  part  in  the  care  of  the  big  human  family 
in  preparing  food,  laying  the  table,  learning 
household  cleanliness  and  household  order.  The 
child  instinct  to  fetch  and  carry,  which  shows 
itself  very  early  in  the  life  of  the  baby,  may  be 
turned  into  channels  of  usefulness  if  the  child  is 
taught  to  happily  wait  on  himself  and  others. 

Much  emphasis  has  been  laid  upon  the  didactic 
apparatus  of  Montessori  which  has  for  its  aim  the 
development  of  the  several  intellectual  processes. 
Considering  these  appliances  for  direct  stimula- 
tion and  perfection  of  mental  activity  only,  the 
casual  student  of  Montessori  says  that  the  system 
is  barren,  that  it  takes  into  account  none  of  the 


158      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

emotional  activities  of  the  child,  that  it  eliminates 
educational  play  from  the  life  of  the  little  one. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  play  instincts  of  the 
child  are  so  carefully  met  by  Dr.  Montessori  that 
they  blossom  into  usefulness.  Dr.  Montessori 
knows  more  about  the  spontaneous  play  of  the 
child  from  two  and  a  half  years  to  six  than  we  do. 
She  sees  that  his  play  instincts  are  all,  at  first, 
a  struggling  to  be  like  his  elders,  to  do  the  same 
utilitarian  things  that  he  sees  them  do,  to  imitate 
on  a  child  plane  the  work  of  his  mother  in  the 
home  or  his  father  in  the  industrial  world.  With 
this  understanding  of  the  possibilities  of  child  play 
for  developing  into  future  usefulness,  Dr.  Mon- 
tessori supplies  children  with  those  tools  of  play 
which  turn  child  play  into  exercises  of  helpfulness. 

In  the  Trionfale  School  at  Rome  the  free  play 
of  the  children  has  been  especially  safeguarded. 
The  toddlers  utilize  their  instinct  to  fetch  and 
carry  objects  by  loading,  trundling,  and  unloading 
the  specially  built,  stout  little  wheelbarrows  pro- 
vided for  them.  Very  soon  this  play  blossoms  into 
the  desire  to  fetch  and  carry  with  some  more  useful 
object  in  view.  The  children  begin  to  show  great 
skill  in  removing  and  replacing  their  materials 


HELPFULNESS  159 

from  the  school  cupboards  and  putting  them  back 
in  an  orderly  fashion.  They  attain  perfect  mus- 
cular control  in  laying  the  tables  for  luncheon  and 
serving  the  food  daintily.  In  one  corner  of  a 
sunlit  room  at  Trionfale  there  is  a  fascinating 
little  salon.  Soft  rugs  of  small  size,  diminutive 
green  wicker  easy-chairs,  sofa,  and  round  tea 
table,  books  of  colored  pictures  and  large  dolls' 
dishes  make  it  possible  for  the  children  to  "  play 
house "  under  ideal  conditions.  They  learn 
through  their  play  a  sweet  kind  of  hospitality,  and 
the  little  school  "  drawing-room  "  of  Montessori 
stands  for  a  necessary  development  of  the  social 
instinct  in  children  which  is  important. 

Dr.  Montessori  suggests  to  us  those  playthings 
and  play  activities  which  will  lead  our  children  into 
the  art  of  being  helpful  and,  which  is  much  more 
vital,  will  start  in  them  habits  of  wanting  to  be 
helpful.  Her  scheme  of  play  is  possible  of  adapt- 
ing to  almost  any  home,  and  it  has  for  its  basis 
the  instinctive  longing  of  every  child  to  be  useful 
through  his  play. 

A  playroom  should  be  a  place,  as  Dr.  Mon- 
tessori expresses  it,  where  the  children  may  amuse 
themselves  with  games,  stories,  possibly  music,  and 


160      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

the  furnishing  should  be  done  with  as  much  taste 
as  in  the  sitting-room  of  the  adult  members  of  the 
family.  Small  tables,  a  sofa,  and  armchairs  of 
child  size,  one  or  two  casts,  copies  of  masterpieces 
of  art,  and  vases  or  bowls  in  which  the  children 
may  arrange  flowers  should  be  included.  There 
should  be  many  picture  books,  blocks,  dolls,  and, 
if  possible,  a  musical  instrument  of  some  kind  in 
the  nursery.  Dr.  Montessori  suggests  a  piano  or 
harp  of  small  dimensions.  An  important  play- 
room accessory  is  a  low  cupboard,  with  drawers  in 
which  the  children  may  keep  their  completed  draw- 
ings, paper  dolls,  scrap  pictures,  and  any  precious 
collection  of  outside  material  such  as  seeds,  leaves, 
twigs,  or  pebbles  which  they  long  to  keep  and  use 
in  their  play.  Half  of  this  cupboard  should  con- 
sist of  shelves  for  bowls,  plates,  napkins,  doilies, 
spoons,  knives,  forks,  a  tray  and  tumblers  for  the 
children  to  use  in  preparing  and  serving  their 
luncheon  or  in  entertaining  their  friends.  Stout 
pottery  of  quaint  shapes  and  exquisite  gay  color- 
ing may  be  obtained  now.  It  is  much  more  at- 
tractive to  the  child  of  three  and  four  years  than 
inadequate,  tiny  sets  of  dolls'  dishes.  At  least  the 
necessary  bowl,  plate,  pitcher,  and  mug  for  serving 


HELPFULNESS  161 

the  nursery  supper  should  be  supplied  and  the  tod- 
dler taught  to  serve  and  feed  himself  at  a  very 
early  age. 

The  child  should  have  a  little  broom  and  dust- 
pan and  scrubbing  brush.  He  should  have  a  low, 
painted  washstand  with  a  basin,  soap,  and  nail- 
brush. He  should  be  taught  how  to  turn  on  and 
off  a  water  tap,  filling  a  small  pitcher,  pail,  or 
basin,  and  carrying  it,  full,  without  spilling.  He 
should  have  low  hooks  for  hanging  his  clothing  for 
outdoor  wear.  Both  small  boys  and  girls  should 
have  bright  little  aprons,  not  so  much  for  pur- 
poses of  cleanliness,  although  this  is  important,  as 
to  inspire  them  to  the  feeling  that  work  is  dig- 
nified and  needs  to  be  set  apart  by  a  uniform  of 
service. 

Dr.  Montessori  urges  that  those  toys  which 
we  buy  be  selected  having  in  mind  helping  the 
child  to  be  an  actor  in  a  little  drama  of  home  life. 
A  plaything,  she  feels,  should  be  a  work  thing, 
capable  of  bringing  a  life  activity  down  to  the 
primitive  plane  of  the  child's  thinking. 

Our  toy  shops  offer  us  now  a  very  wide  variety 
of  such  educational  toys  from  which  to  choose. 
We  may  find  large  dolls,  modeled  from  life,  and 


162      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

wearing  clothes  similar  to  children  and  requiring 
the  same  muscular  co-ordination  in  fastening  and 
unfastening.  There  is  large  furniture  for  these 
dolls,  built  on  good  lines  and  teaching  a  little  girl 
to  make  a  bed  neatly  and  keep  the  doll's  bureau 
drawers  in  order.  There  are  good-sized  washing 
sets,  including  tubs,  basket,  lines,  clothespins, 
ironing  board,  and  sad  irons;  we  find  very  com- 
plete dolls'  houses,  sewing  materials  with  dolls' 
patterns  and  small  sewing  machines,  kitchens 
where  the  child  can  pretend  to  cook,  complete  sets 
of  cooking  utensils,  and  lifelike  toy  animals. 

These  toys  Dr.  Montessori  urges  us  to  use,  real- 
izing that  the  child's  deepest  play  impulse  is  to 
dramatize  in  the  theater  of  the  home  playroom 
the  everyday  utilitarian  occupations  of  the  race. 


MARIO'S  PLAYS 

Montessori  and  the  Child's  Imagination 

MARIO  played  a  great  deal,  and  I  noticed,  as  I 
watched  him  critically,  that  his  play  was  of  a 
very  strongly  imaginative  kind. 

He  was  one  of  the  youngest  of  the  little  ones 
at  the  Trionfale  Children's  House,  and  it  had 
taken  him  a  rather  longer  time  than  it  had  the 
other  children  to  gain  control  of  his  impulsive 
hands,  his  little  truant  feet,  his  vagrant-tending 
mind.  During  this  first  period  of  his  Montessori 
schooling,  when  his  attention  was  scattering  and 
he  found  difficulty  in  making  muscular  co-ordina- 
tion and  differentiating  form  and  color  clearly,  he 
seemed  also  to  have  difficulty  in  amusing  himself. 
His  play  impulses  at  this  time  seemed  to  be  very 
primitive ;  he  took  pleasure  in  idling  in  some  sunny 
spot,  kitten-like,  or  he  arranged  and  rearranged 
the  pieces  of  wicker  furniture  which  filled  the  salon 
corner  of  the  schoolroom,  or  he  found  entertain- 
ment in  interfering  with  the  work  of  the  other 

163 


164      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

little  ones.  There  seemed  to  be  no  element  of 
creativeness  or  originality  in  his  play. 

Presently,  however,  Mario  began  to  show  a 
steady  intellectual  development  in  his  work. 
Through  the  physical  exercises  of  Montessori, 
through  the  rhythmic  exercises  carried  on  with 
music  and  through  exercises  of  usefulness  in  keep- 
ing himself  and  the  room  neat  and  waiting  upon 
others,  he  learned  an  important  lesson  of  muscular 
co-ordination. 

He  learned  to  make  his  body  respond  to  the 
command  of  his  brain. 

Through  the  sense  exercises  in  recognizing  fine 
differentiations  of  color  and  form  and  weight  and 
sound  and  texture,  Mario  found  a  clear  mental 
vision.  A  month  before,  the  hill  back  of  the 
school  had  been  a  blur  to  his  mental  vision.  Now 
it  was,  for  him,  a  clear  percept  made  up  of  various 
component  parts.  He  saw  it  tall,  broad,  steep, 
colored  in  varying  tints  of  green  and  brown;  its 
outlines  were  broken  for  him  by  the  sunshine,  the 
gardens,  the  red  and  yellow  tiled  houses ;  he  could 
almost  smell  the  sweet  perfume  from  its  orchards 
and  vineyards. 

The  sense-training  of  the  Montessori  system  had 


THE    CHILD'S    IMAGINATION      165 

quickened  and  clarified  the  little  boy's  perceptive 
faculties. 

Following  side  by  side  with  Mario's  new  mental 
development  came  as  marked  a  development  in 
his  play.  His  play  impulses  were  no  longer  scat- 
tering but  had  objectivity.  He  was,  in  fancy,  a 
steam  engine  puffing  along  or  the  little  father  of  a 
group  of  other  children. 

As  he  swung  himself  over  the  parallel  bars  in 
the  school  yard  he  felt  that  he  was  a  famous 
acrobat  entertaining  an  applauding  audience.  In 
a  second  he  slipped  into  another  path  of  fancy; 
as  he  piled  stones  into  a  pyramid,  he  was  a  great 
builder.  More  than  this,  Mario's  newly-found 
play  impulses  carried  him  into  a  unique  plane  of 
idealism.  Crouched  in  a  sunny  corner  of  the 
playground,  he  was  a  sleeping  seed ;  slowly  and 
with  spontaneous  grace  the  little  body  rose,  arms 
upstretched,  as  Mario  felt  in  dreams  the  growth 
of  root  and  branch  and  flower.  No  one  had  taught 
four-year-old  Mario  the  skill  of  making  real  these 
fantasies.  How  had  he  taken  his  way  alone  into 
the  fertile  fields  of  the  imagination? 

It  has  been  suggested  that  the  Montessori  sys- 
tem does  not  take  into  account  the  stimulating  of 


166      MONTESSORI   CHILDREN 

the  child's  imagination.  Daily  instances  of  very 
original,  undirected  imaginative  play  on  the  part 
of  Montessori  children  show  a  subtle  force  at  work 
in  the  method  which  results  in  a  spontaneous  un- 
folding of  the  imagination.  The  games  and  plays 
which  we  teach  our  children  in  kindergarten  and 
primary  school  are  carried  on  by  the  Montessori- 
trained  children  without  adult  supervision.  Leav- 
ing their  work,  they  run  to  the  garden  or  play- 
ground, imitating  with  great  freedom  and  beauty 
of  imagination  the  activities  of  the  gardener,  the 
baker,  the  artisan,  the  street  vender,  and  the  trav- 
eling musician.  They  even  impersonate  in  a  more 
idealistic  way,  playing,  as  did  little  Mario,  that 
they  are  birds  and  flowers. 

This  natural  expression  of  imagination  in  very 
young  children  is  an  important  development  of  the 
method,  and  a  suggestive  one. 

We  are  all  familiar  with  the  timid,  shrinking 
little  child  in  the  center  of  a  game  circle  who 
doesn't  want  to  be  a  chickadee,  but  who  is  urged 
by  the  teacher  in  charge  of  the  circle.  The  child 
persists  in  her  disinclination;  she  is  overawed  by 
so  large  a  ring  of  spectators;  it  is  possible  that 
she  has  never  seen  a  chickadee.  The  teacher,  also, 


THE    CHILD'S    IMAGINATION      167 

persists.  She  goes  to  the  child  and  tries  to  teach 
her  the  motions  of  bird  flight,  but  the  child  sees 
only  an  adult  running  about  and  waving  her  arms 
in  an  unusual  way.  She  does  not  connect  the 
spectacle  in  any  way  with  the  free  flight  of  a  bird, 
and  when  she  does  take  courage  and  tries  to  follow 
the  directions  of  her  teacher,  the  little  one  is  not 
giving  expression  to  her  own  mental  image,  but  is 
endeavoring  to  imitate  a  rather  ungainly  adult. 

Is  this  play  of  the  imaginative  type? 

It  would  seem  as  if  we  have  lost  sight  of  the 
real  character  of  this  elusive,  subtle,  unexplain- 
able  fruition  of  the  mental  faculties,  the  imagina- 
tion. It  is  the  unforeseen  mind  power  which  makes 
poets  and  painters  and  sculptors  and  conquerors. 
It  is  a  mind  vision  which  sees  success  beyond  de- 
feat, worth  hidden  in  rags,  and  good  blossoming 
out  of  evil.  It  makes  us  hear  the  piping  of  Pan 
as  the  wind  blows  the  reeds  beside  the  river;  it 
promises  us  a  pot  of  gold  if  we  can  build  ourselves 
a  rainbow  bridge  across  every  cloud  of  despair; 
it  shows  us  the  lineaments  of  God  in  the  guise  of 
sorrow  and  poverty. 

Imagination  in  the  child  finds  varied  expres- 
sions. There  are  a  great  many  instances  where 


168      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

a  child  who  is  lonely  and  longs  for  companionship 
sees  and  holds  daily  intercourse  with  an  invisible 
playmate  whom  he  can  describe  with  great  accu- 
racy of  detail.  In  the  majority  of  cases  this  invis- 
ible playmate  in  disposition,  appearance,  and  tastes 
is  unlike  any  member  of  the  family  or  any  friend  of 
the  child's.  Where  did  the  child  find  this  fancy? 

A  child  has  the  power  of  a  seer  to  develop  the 
unknown  potentialities  in  apparently  dead  things. 
This  dry  brown  leaf,  frost-killed  of  the  sap  of  life, 
is,  in  the  child's  fancy,  a  gnome,  jumping  along 
in  the  path  in  front  of  him  to  warn  the  birds  of 
the  coming  of  winter.  An  acorn  is  a  golden  goblet 
brimming  with  fairy  nectar;  a  hollow  tree  is  a 
magic  place  in  which  to  set  up  a  domicile.  No 
one  schooled  the  child  in  these  tricks  of  thought. 
How  did  he  find  them? 

Dr.  Montessori  explains  the  growth  of  child 
imagination. 

The  child  is  born  with  a  certain  defined  mental 
equipment.  He  has  instincts,  inherited  memories 
they  might  be  called,  and  he  struggles  to  feed 
these  instincts.  He  has  capacities  for  acquiring 
good  or  bad  habits  very  early.  He  has  a  race-old 
longing  to  gain  knowledge  by  means  of  his  senses. 


THE    CHILD'S    IMAGINATION      169 

Our  part  in  the  education  of  the  child  is  to  study 
his  instinctive  activities,  giving  them  opportuni- 
ties for  free  expression  where  they  are  important 
for  the  child's  best  mental  development.  A  child 
likes  to  play  in  the  dirt  because  his  ancestors  lived 
in  caves  and  tilled  the  soil;  it  is  necessary  for  the 
child's  best  development  that  he  play  in  sand  and 
model  in  clay  and  plant  little  gardens.  A  child 
instinctively  fights  because  his  ancestors  survived 
only  by  warfare;  this  child  instinct  we  must  in- 
hibit. 

We  must  establish  good  habits  in  a  child  early. 
We  must  help  him,  through  various  sense  exer- 
cises, to  gain  clear  percepts  of  his  environment. 
We  must  try  not  to  force  our  adult  view-point 
upon  the  child,  but  endeavor  to  establish  in  him 
a  habit  of  independent  self-active  thought. 

Then,  after  we  have  strengthened  the  general 
intellectual  processes  of  the  child  mind,  Dr.  Mon- 
tessori  points  to  us  a  miracle.  Dovetailing  in- 
stinct and  habit  and  perception,  the  child  intellect 
begins  to  build.  Clear  percepts  become  concepts ; 
mental  images  become  ideals,  imagination  appears, 
building  from  the  clay  of  everyday-mind  stuff  a 
golden  castle  of  dreams. 


170      MONTESSORI   CHILDREN 

Imagination  cannot  be  taught.  It  can  scarcely 
be  defined.  It  can  never  be  prescribed  and  trained. 
It  is  that  flowering  of  the  mind  processes  by 
means  of  which  a  bit  of  brown  sod  appears  tinted 
with  light  and  color  to  the  artist,  full  of  poten- 
tialities of  growth  to  the  gardener,  smells  of  home 
to  the  wanderer.  If  the  three  types  of  minds, 
as  children,  had  been  told  that  a  similar  piece 
of  sod  was  a  blanket  for  the  sleeping  seeds,  one 
questions  if  it  would  have  been  gilded  for  them  in 
adult  life  with  this  glow  of  individual  fancy.  On 
the  contrary,  the  painter  has  been  trained  to  see 
color,  the  gardener  has  experienced  the  cultiva- 
tion of  life  in  the  earth,  the  home  lover's  hungry 
senses  grasped  the  memory  of  former  sense  stimuli. 

Dr.  Montessori  tells  us  that  the  imagination 
develops  variously  in  different  individuals.  There 
may  be  a  child  who  will  never  be  able  to  pierce  the 
veil  of  reality  and  find  his  way  into  the  court  of 
fantasy.  There  will  be  also  the  child  who  de- 
velops a  seerlike  quality  of  idealism.  He  moves 
in  a  world  of  blissful  unrealities ;  he  sees  angels' 
wings  in  the  clouds  and  angels'  eyes  in  the  stars. 
Our  part  in  the  education  of  little  children  is  to 
build  the  tower  for  a  possible  poising  of  the  child's 


THE    CHILD'S    IMAGINATION      171 

wings  of  fancy.  Then  we  will  wait  hopefully  for 
the  wonder  flight. 

The  various  parts  of  the  didactic  apparatus  of 
Montessori  presented  to  a  child  in  their  proper 
relation  to  his  stage  of  mental  growth  have  a 
definite  place  in  strengthening  the  mental  processes 
which  lie  at  the  basis  of  imagination. 

We  are  so  unaccustomed  to  offering  any  sort  of 
mind  food  to  the  child  of  two  and  a  half  or  three 
that  we  have  allowed  the  little  child  to  go  mind 
hungry.  At  this  early  stage  of  a  child's  develop- 
ment the  right  kind  of  mental  training  will  lay  a 
foundation  for  the  constructive  and  intellectual 
processes  of  imagination  and  reasoning. 

The  child  of  two  and  three  years  of  age  is  at 
the  sensory-motor  stage  of  mind  development.  He 
longs  for  experiences  which  he  can  turn  into  ac- 
tion ;  his  mind  craves  ideas  which  will  express  them- 
selves in  useful  muscular  co-ordination  and  the 
ability  to  adjust  himself  to  his  environment.  To 
put  into  a  child's  hands  the  materials  for  this 
sensory-motor  education  early  is  not  to  overtax 
his  mind;  instead,  it  satisfies  his  very  important 
mind  hunger. 

The  didactic  materials  of  Montessori  that  sup- 


172      MONTESSORI   CHILDREN 

ply  this  sensory-motor  need  of  the  very  young 
child  and  should  be  presented  early  include  the 
various  dressing  frames,  the  solid  insets,  the  sound 
boxes,  the  blocks  of  the  tower,  the  broad  stair 
and  the  long  stair,  the  latter  without  the  use  of 
the  sandpaper  numerals.  As  soon  as  the  little 
one  has  made  his  own  the  muscular  co-ordination 
and  ideas  of  form  in  relation  to  size  involved  in 
this  material  and  has  begun  to  find  the  will  power 
to  correct  his  own  mistakes,  other  home  activities 
involving  these  mental  faculties  should  be  added 
to  the  use  of  the  Montessori  apparatus.  The 
child  may  dress,  undress,  bathe  himself,  dress  and 
undress  a  doll,  build  with  large  blocks,  sort  various 
objects  of  different  shapes  and  sizes,  as  seeds,  nuts, 
spools,  button  molds ;  handle  and  learn  the  uses 
of  the  furnishings  and  equipment  of  the  home: 
toilet  utensils,  brush,  broom,  duster,  dustpan, 
kitchen  appliances,  and  the  like ;  he  should  receive 
simple  ear-training  in  discriminating  different  bell 
tones,  high  and  low,  loud  and  soft  notes  played 
on  the  piano,  and  hear  good  models  of  speech,  both 
in  diction  and  modulation. 

At  the  age  of  three  to  four  years,  the  sensory 
element  in  the  child's  mental  life  is  even  more 


THE    CHILD'S    IMAGINATION      173 

prominent,  but  it  is  separated  a  little  from  motor 
activities.  If  the  child  has  had  adequate  training, 
he  has  obtained  a  large  degree  of  muscular  con- 
trol; he  can  handle  objects  without  breaking  them, 
he  can  run  without  falling  down,  he  can  minister  to 
his  own  bodily  needs.  Now  his  mind  is  hungry 
for  sense  images.  He  wishes  to  study  his  environ- 
ment with  the  aim  of  securing  a  series  of  definite 
mind  pictures.  Ideas  are  to  be  stored  in  the  work- 
shop of  the  child  mind  for  future  use  in  building 
the  power  of  constructive  imagination. 

The  Montessori  didactic  apparatus  suited  to 
thisJdeo-scnsorv  stage  of  the  child's  development 
includes  the  color  spools,  the  geometric  insets,  the 
baric  sense  tablets,  the  sandpaper  boards,  and  the 
textiles.  The  sense-training  involved  in  the  child's 
use  of  these  should  be  applied  in  various  ways :  find- 
ing and  matching  home  and  outdoor  colors,  noting 
the  size,  shape,  and  form  of  various  everyday  ob- 
jects, block  building  with  an  idea  of  form,  cutting 
form  to  line  with  blunt-pointed  scissors,  clay- 
modeling,  and  constructive  sand-play. 

The  child  from  four  years  to  five  shows  a  dawn- 
ing of  the  constructive  imagination.  The  spool 
with  which  he  played  like  a  kitten  in  baby  days 


174      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

has  new  potentialities  in  his  eyes.  Having  learned 
that  it  is  wooden,  round,  and  will  roll,  and  having 
made  a  mental  comparison  of  it  with  the  wheel  of 
his  toy  cart,  which  is  also  wooden,  round,  and 
will  roll,  he  calls  the  spool  a  wheel.  This  is  a  very 
important  break  in  the  child's  mental  life.  It 
demonstrates  to  us  that  the  child  now  has  ideas 
in  the  abstract.  Dr.  Montessori  meets  this  with 
those  of  her  didactic  appliances,  which  will  lead 
a  child  by  natural,  easy  steps  from  objective  to 
abstract  thinking.  She  strengthens  the  sensory 
life  of  the  child  and  guides  him  toward  a  grasp 
of  the  symbols  of  thought.  Those  parts  of  the 
didactic  apparatus  which  should  be  presented  at 
this  point  to  the  child  are  the  long  stair,  with  the 
sandpaper  letters,  and  the  various  arithmetic  ex- 
ercises to  be  had  with  the  rods ;  the  counting  boxes 
and  frame,  the  sandpaper  letters,  the  movable 
alphabet,  and  the  drawing  tablets. 

Now,  the  child  shows  individualistic  thinking. 
The  direct  mental  training  of  Montessori  has  built 
a  solid  foundation  for  the  growth  and  unfolding 
of  the  imagination.  Our  place  is  to  watch  for 
the  special  trend  of  his  mind  development  and  help 
this  as  far  as  lies  in  our  power. 


THE    CHILD'S    IMAGINATION      175 

Does  the  child  show  special  interest  in  the  sym- 
bols and  combinations  of  number?  We  should 
help  him  to  play  store,  provide  him  with  numerical 
games,  give  him  a  chance  to  spend  and  account  for 
a  weekly  allowance,  do  home  errands,  use  a  tool 
box,  construct  cardboard  toys,  and  learn  any  other 
possible  application  of  number  in  its  relation  to 
life.  Does  he  make  a  quick  mastery  of  the  symbols 
of  language?  We  should  transfer  him  as  quickly 
as  possible  into  simple  reading  books,  offering  him 
a  great  variety  of  these,  that  he  may  feed  his 
imagination  with  good  stories. 

It  has  been  said  that  the  average  American 
child  exhausts  the  possibilities  of  the  Montessori 
apparatus  at  the  age  of  five  years.  Of  course  he 
does.  Dr.  Montessori  planned  it  as  a  means  of 
lighting  the  flame,  touching  the  torch,  opening  the 
switch. 

With  a  marvelous  completeness  it  does  this. 
Our  part  lies  in  keeping  the  flame  burning,  guiding 
the  express  train  of  the  child  mind  into  the  higher 
places  of  reason,  imagination,  and  personal 
achievement. 


THE  GREAT  SILENCE 

Montessori  Development  of  Repose 

IT  was  an  amazing  fact,  but  a  significant  one, 
that  four-year-old  Joanina  had  never  been  allowed 
to  feel  herself. 

As  she  lay  in  her  carved-wood  cradle,  a  bun- 
dle of  cooing,  pink  delight,  she  felt  for  her  toes, 
that  she  might  assure  herself  of  her  own  iden- 
tity as  represented  in  those  wriggling  lumps 
of  flesh.  But  Joanina's  mother  bound  the  little 
limbs  in  swaddling  bands  and  the  bambino  lost  her 
toes  temporarily.  When  she  was  a  bit  older,  and 
was  allowed  to  bask,  kitten-like,  on  a  rug  in  the 
garden  path,  she  was  charmed  to  hold  her  flower- 
like  baby  hands  up  to  the  light,  watching  the 
Roman  sunshine  trickle  through  outstretched  fin- 
gers as  she  tried  to  count  them.  But,  always,  her 
emotional,  kindly  intentioned  madre  would  toss  a 
bright-colored  ball  into  the  reaching  hands  or, 
bending  over  the  baby,  would  play  pat-a-cake  with 
her,  or  she  would  suggest  a  romp  up  and  down  the 
176 


DEVELOPMENT    OF    REPOSE     177 

garden.  Her  self-imposed  quiet  was  always  inter- 
rupted by  her  mother's  unrest. 

As  Joanina  grew  to  a  slim  little  girl  of  Italy, 
whose  great,  wistful  brown  eyes  reflected  a  large 
curiosity  and  awe  at  the  surprises  of  the  world 
in  which  she  found  herself,  she  was  daily  sur- 
rounded by  forces  that  drew  her  away  from  her- 
self. Her  home  was  full  of  glaring  colored  pic- 
tures hung  on  vividly  dyed  wall  paper.  Her 
mother  and  father  talked  together  in  high-pitched, 
shrill  voices,  and  through  the  wide  casement  win- 
dows came  the  harsh  sounds  of  traveling  street 
musicians  and  brawling  venders.  Always,  as  a 
treat  on  Sunday  or  a  festa,  Joanina  was  taken  to 
see  a  procession  or  to  a  band  concert  in  one  of 
the  parks.  The  crowded,  hot  stone  streets,  the 
noisy  cracking  of  the  cab-drivers'  whips,  the  strug- 
gle to  make  her  own  short  legs  keep  up  with  the 
longer  steps  of  the  madre,  wearied  and  excited  the 
little  maid. 

But  she  grew  accustomed  to  noise  and  boister- 
ousness  in  her  days ;  she  grew  to  expect  them  as 
well.  Then  she  came  to  depend  upon  outside 
forces  for  keeping  the  motor  of  her  baby  spirit 
going.  She  begged  for  new  toys,  exhausting 


178      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

quickly  the  pleasure  to  be  found  in  old  playthings. 
She  asked  for  new  frocks,  aping  the  vanity  of  her 
mother  and  the  other  women  she  saw  on  the  Corso 
on  feast  days.  She  allowed  her  child  playmates  to 
plan  her  games.  She  cried  to  be  taken  into  the 
turbid  streets.  From  a  placid,  reposeful  baby, 
Joanina  developed  into  a  restless,  passionate,  dis- 
traction-seeking little  girl.  Germs  of  discontent, 
disquiet,  hysteria  were  planted  in  her  child  soul. 

When  Joanina  found  herself  one  morning  in  the 
Trionfale  Children's  House,  she  experienced  an  un- 
conscious feeling  of  peace.  The  very  wide  spaces 
of  the  two  rooms  where  the  little  ones  busily  and 
happily  worked;  the  cool  gray  walls  unbroken  in 
their  sweep  save  by  a  blue  and  white  terra-cotta 
bas-relief  here  and  there;  the  plain  brown  linen 
curtains  that  softened  and  toned  the  yellow  sun- 
light and  rippled  with  a  flower-scented  breeze — 
these  helped  to  make  Joanina's  peace.  Dropping 
into  one  of  the  little  white  chairs,  she  looked  about 
her  with  eyes  that  again  melted  into  the  calm 
wonder  of  her  babyhood.  She  could  not  have  ex- 
plained it,  but  there  was  already  at  home  in  her 
life  a  new,  quiet  repose. 

Surrounding    her    was    a    child    republic    that 


DEVELOPMENT    OF    REPOSE     179 

opened  its  heart  to  her.  Some  of  the  children,  in 
groups,  were  sorting  and  grading  with  quiet  skill 
scores  of  the  silk-wound  color  spools.  Others, 
alone,  were  testing  their  knowledge  of  dimension 
and  form  with  the  solid  and  geometric  insets.  In 
a  corner,  a  determined  baby  was  trying  to  button 
the  apron  of  another  baby.  All  were  entertained, 
yet  no  one  was  entertaining  them.  They  were 
making  their  own  content. 

Without  warning,  the  directress  turned  from 
the  child  whom  she  had  been  giving  a  lesson  in 
numbers  with  the  counting  case,  moved  to  the 
front  of  the  room,  and  wrote  upon  the  blackboard 
one  word,  Silence.  Then  she  waited,  herself  silent 
and  facing  the  little  ones.  Joanina,  too,  waited. 
She  did  not  understand ;  she  was  curious. 

The  children,  recognizing  the  written  word,  one 
by  one  laid  down  their  work,  dropped  into  posi- 
tions of  quiet  repose,  their  eyes  closed.  Some  laid 
their  heads  upon  their  folded  arms.  The  room 
became  so  hushed  that  such  faint  sounds  as  the 
low  ticking  of  the  clock,  the  hum  of  a  buzzing  fly, 
the  gentle  rise  and  fall  of  breathing,  became  vi- 
brant. The  children's  faces  were  full  of  calm  joy, 
their  bodies  were  completely  motionless.  They 


180      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

had  gone  away  from  their  small  republic  of  work 
and  play  for  a  space.  Who  could  tell  where  they 
were?  Each  child  was  feeling  himself;  for  the 
time  being  he  was  listening  to  the  call  of  his  own 
personality. 

Joanina,  interested  in  the  game  of  silence,  closed 
her  eyes.  She  folded  her  restless  fingers.  She 
waited,  rapt,  immobile  as  a  little  chiseled  cherub. 
It  was  perhaps  the  first  time  in  her  four  years5 
apprenticeship  to  Life  that  she  had  been  given  an 
opportunity  to  listen  to  her  own  heart  throbs,  feel 
the  grip  of  her  own  personality.  The  experience 
was  satisfying  to  her.  She  heard  and  felt  a  great 
many  inner  voices  and  mental  forces  that  she  had 
never  listened  to  or  obeyed  before.  She  heard  the 
voices  of  happiness  in  her  new,  peaceful  environ- 
ment and  love  for  the  other  children  and  joy  at 
the  complete  freedom  that  surrounded  her.  She 
felt  the  impulse  to  do  and  learn  as  she  had  seen 
the  other  children  doing  and  learning. 

For  several  minutes,  the  silence  held  the  children 
in  its  spell.  Then,  out  of  the  stillness  the  whis- 
pered voice  of  the  directress  floated.  As  a  singing 
wind  of  a  far-away  forest,  a  mountain  echo,  or  the 
low  voice  of  a  mother  as  it  first  makes  itself  audi- 


DEVELOPMENT    OF    REPOSE     181 

ble  to  a  new-born  babe,  came  the  voice :  "  Joanina." 

The  little  girl  opened  her  eyes,  meeting  the 
smiling  ones  of  the  directress,  who  made  a  gesture 
indicating  that  Joanina  should  go  to  her  quietly. 
Poised  on  tiptoe,  Joanina  crossed  the  room  noise- 
lessly, threw  herself  into  the  outstretched  arms  of 
the  directress. 

"  Mario,  Otello,"  softly  the  other  children  were 
called  until  all  had,  as  silently  as  Joanina,  left 
their  places  and  surrounded  the  directress.  Their 
eyes  shone,  their  faces  glowed  as  if  they  had  been 
refreshed  by  an  elixir  bath.  Yet  the  Montessori 
silence  game  which  had  brought  about  this  inspira- 
tion and  refreshing  in  the  life  of  soul-starved  little 
Joanina  might  have  been  a  part  of  her  home  life. 

Your  child  needs  it;  you  need  it. 

There  is,  perhaps,  no  more  significant  phase  of 
the  Montessori  system  of  education  than  the  calm, 
quiet  habit  of  self-contemplation  aroused  by  the 
game  of  silence.  The  self-control,  the  poise,  the 
power  of  long  concentration  that  one  sees  in  the 
Montessori  children  at  Rome  amazes  the  world. 
They  are  completely  lacking  in  self-consciousness ; 
they  ask  for  help  in  their  work  only  when  it  is 
absolutely  necessary ;  they  are  sure  of  themselves. 


182      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

In  writing  about  the  game  of  silence,  it  has 
been  suggested  that  the  game  has  an  hypnotic 
quality;  that  the  calm,  beautifully  poised  direct- 
ress imposes  her  own  personality  upon  the  chil- 
dren, controls  them  as  the  hypnotist  controls  his 
subject.  This  is  not  true.  As  the  didactic  ma- 
terials furnish  the  right  means  for  the  child's 
mental  development,  so  the  opportunity  given 
by  the  game  of  silence  makes  possible  the 
child's  moral  and  spiritual  development.  It 
gives  him  a  chance  to  listen  to  the  "  still, 
small  voice "  that  is  a  speaking  voice  in  child- 
hood but  which  is  drowned  by  the  babel  of  world 
tongues  that  we  allow  to  make  our  song  of  life  in 
adult  years. 

The  story  of  Joanina,  the  little  Roman  girl,  is 
retold  in  almost  every  American  home.  As  we, 
ourselves,  depend  upon  public  opinion,  outside 
amusements,  entertaining  friends,  the  judgment  of 
the  press,  the  fashions  of  the  day  for  filling  our 
lives,  so  we  make  our  children,  also,  dependent 
upon  similar  forces  for  forming  their  characters. 
We  surround  children  with  gossip,  we  teach  them 
to  depend  upon  excitement  for  their  pleasure ;  we 
build  their  ideals  of  conduct  upon  what  the  world 


DEVELOPMENT    OF    REPOSE     183 

will  think  instead  of  what  their  conscience  dic- 
tates. We  make  of  our  little  ones  modern  Babes  in 
the  Woods  who  lose  themselves  in  a  forest  of  be- 
wildering, overgrown  paths.  We  give  them  no 
chance  to  blaze  their  own  trails. 

What  is  the  application  to  the  American  home 
of  the  Montessori  game  of  silence? 

It  begins  with  the  American  mother  who  must 
cultivate  a  habit  of  quiet  self-contemplation.  She 
must  be  able  to  shut  out  the  world  as  did  the  stoics, 
listening  to  the  good  voice  of  her  own  soul.  It 
means,  also,  that  she  will  be  less  dependent  upon 
her  environment  for  her  daily  thinking  and  hap- 
piness and  more  adept  at  creating  her  own  joys. 
We  are  very  restless,  to-day,  discontented  unless 
we  are  surrounded  by  friends  or  obsessed  by  pas- 
sion of  some  sort,  or  we  must  go  somewhere.  We 
will  try  to  slip  back  into  the  simple  living  of  our 
great-grandmothers,  who  had  resources  in  them- 
selves and  could  be  radiantly  happy,  pottering 
over  the  lavender  in  their  gardens  or  reading  their 
Bibles  in  the  candlelight  of  some  long-ago  evening 
— alone. 

The  mother  who  cultivates  in  herself  a  habit  of 
repose  will  have  reposeful  children. 


184      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

The  game  of  silence,  as  it  may  be  put  into  prac- 
tice in  the  training  of  children,  begins  with  ear- 
training.  Shut  out  harsh  sounds  from  the  home 
where  there  are  little  children.  To  command  a 
child  in  a  loud  voice  often  results  in  disobedience ; 
it  makes  him  mentally  deaf  for  the  time  being. 
He  does  not  hear  what  is  said  to  him ;  it  dulls 
his  senses.  We  all  know  how  the  memory  of  some 
gentle  voice  that  either  sang  or  spoke  to  us  in 
childhood  comes  back  to  us,  now,  as  a  forceful 
memory.  It  was  the  softness  of  that  voice  that 
made  the  lasting  record  in  our  minds. 

Often  a  mother  may  whisper  a  sentence  to  a 
child,  or  call  softly  from  different  parts  of  the 
house,  asking  the  little  one  to  locate  her  by  the 
sense  of  hearing.  This  will  quicken  and  cultivate 
the  child's  power  to  listen  and  concentrate  upon 
the  use  of  one  sense.  And  we  should  eliminate  all 
unnecessary  noises  from  our  homes;  the  slamming 
of  doors,  the  crashing  of  dishes,  harsh  popular 
music,  and  crude  songs. 

As  the  children's  sense  of  hearing  is  refined,  we 
will  lead  them  to  listen  to  the  very  small  sounds 
in  the  world  about  them,  the  soft  breathing  of 
the  sleeping  baby,  the  far-away  ticking  of  a  clock, 


DEVELOPMENT    OF    REPOSE     185 

the  hum  of  insects,  distant  footsteps,  the  patter 
of  rain,  the  song  of  the  wind. 

Then  when  this  fine  power  of  listening  has  been 
cultivated,  we  may  introduce  the  game  of  silence 
itself.  The  mother  may  show  the  child  that  she 
is  able  to  sit  quietly,  immobile,  relaxed  for  a  short 
period  of  time — only  thinking.  Then  the  little  ones 
may  be  encouraged  to  attempt  the  game,  waiting 
in  perfect  silence,  with  closed  eyes,  until  mother 
calls  them  in  a  soft  whisper  to  "  come  back  "  to 
the  world  again.  To  darken  the  room  a  little 
during  the  game  adds  to  its  power.  Gradually  the 
periods  of  the  silence  may  be  lengthened,  and  re- 
sults will  show  in  the  child's  life  in  greater  con- 
trol, quiet,  and  life  balance.  In  this  repose  and 
silence,  Dr.  Montessori  tells  us,  both  adults 
and  children  gather  strength  and  newness  of 
life. 

A  little  maid  of  three  had  been  having  her  first 
birthday  party.  Light  and  music  and  romping 
games  and  many  gifts  had  filled  the  afternoon 
with  unexperienced  delights  for  the  child.  She  was 
trembling  with  delight,  on  tiptoe  with  excitement 
when  the  children  marched  out  to  the  dining-room 
and  were  seated  about  the  beautifully  laid,  rose- 


186      MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

strewn  table.  At  a  signal  the  curtains  were  drawn 
and  the  children  were  told  to  be  silent  and  close 
their  eyes  for  a  space.  There  was  a  vibrant  hush, 
a  space  of  time  passed,  then  one  child  after  another 
raised  her  head  and  opened  her  eyes.  The  room 
was  still  darkened,  but  in  the  center  of  the  table 
had  been  placed  the  huge,  white  birthday  cake 
surrounded  by  a  wreath  of  flowers ;  the  only  light 
was  the  starry  shining  of  three  white  candles  on 
the  top.  The  little  birthday  child  looked  in  won- 
der. Then  she  drew  a  long  breath  and  said  in  a 
whisper,  "  Nearer,  my  God,  to  Thee." 

No  one  quite  understood  the  little  one.  It 
seemed  to  have  been  a  vagary,  a  precocity  on  her 
part.  It  was  an  unusual  manifestation,  but  quite 
explainable  as  we  grew  to  realize  the  inspirational 
possibilities  of  the  Montessori  silence. 

When  it  is  not  possible,  because  we  are  dealing 
with  an  isolated  child,  to  put  into  practice  the 
game  of  silence  as  it  is  used  in  the  Children's 
Houses,  we  can  still  lead  the  child  to  know  and  feel 
silence.  A  quiet  hour  in  the  twilight  after  the 
work  and  play  of  the  daytime  are  over,  a  trip  to 
some  still,  lovely  spot  in  the  woods,  a  few  mo- 
ments spent  in  the  hushed  interior  of  a  church, 


DEVELOPMENT    OF    REPOSE     187 

will  remain  as  reposeful  memories  in  the  life  of  the 
child.  More  than  repose,  even,  they  may  be  in- 
spirational, as,  shut  away  from  the  noise  and  activ- 
ity of  the  world,  the  child  is  able  to  hear  the  call 
of  his  own  spirit. 

We  all  know  and  love  Bastien-Lepage's  paint- 
ing of  the  maid,  Jeanne  d'Arc,  listening  to  the 
voices  in  her  garden.  The  grass  dotted  with 
flowers,  the  bending  apple  tree,  the  other  homely 
surroundings  of  the  humble  home  that  were  all 
Jeanne  had  known,  fade  away  as  the  voice  of  the 
prophetic  soul  speaks  to  her;  as  she  sees  the  vision 
of  herself,  the  saviour  of  France. 

Jeanne  d'Arc  was  only  thirteen  when  she  began 
to  hear  the  voice  of  her  spirit. 

Millet,  as  a  boy,  saw  nature  with  his  spirit  eyes. 
He  showed  his  father  colors  playing  over  the 
rough  sod  of  his  home  fields  which  no  one  else 
could  see.  Rousseau,  in  boyhood,  declared  that  he 
was  able  to  converse  with  his  beloved  trees  and 
they  told  him  the  secrets  of  their  beauty.  Samuel 
was  only  a  very  little  boy  when  he  heard  and 
interpreted  his  Master's  voice.  The  boy  Christ 
heard  a  message  that  he  was  able  to  carry  to  the 
doctors. 


188       MONTESSORI    CHILDREN 

May  we  not  give  our  little  ones  an  opportunity 
to  step  across  the  threshold  of  the  present  into 
that  great  silence  which  begins  life  and  also  ends 
it,  and  which  is  melodious  for  those  who  are  trained 
to  listen? 


THE    END 


By  DOROTHY  CANFIELD  FISHER 

Author  of  The  Squirrel-Cage,  Hillsboro  People,  etc. 

A  MONTESSORI  MOTHER 

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Benjamin  Franklin  Episode,  Lincoln  Episode,  Final  Tableau. 

HAWTHORNE  PAGEANT  (for  Outdoor  or  Indoor  Produc- 
tion) : — Chorus  of  Spirits  of  the  Old  Manse,  Prologue  by  the 
Muse  of  Hawthorne,  In  Witchcraft  Days,  Dance  Interlude, 
Merrymount,  etc. 

The  portions  marked  with  a  star  (*)  are  one-act  plays 
suitable  for  separate  performance.  There  are  full  directions 
for  simple  costumes,  scenes,  and  staging.  12mo.  $1.35  net. 

THE  HOUSE  OF  THE  HEART 

Short  plays  in  verse  for  children  of  fourteen  or  younger : — 
"The  House  of  the  Heart  (Morality  Play) — "The  Enchanted 
Garden"  (Flower  Play)— "A  Little  Pilgrim's  Progress"  (Mor- 
ality Play) — "A  Pageant  of  Hours"  (To  be  given  Out  of 
Doors) — "On  Christmas  Eve."  "The  Princess  and  the  Pix- 
ies." "The  Christmas  Guest"  (Miracle  Play.),  etc.  $1.10  net. 

"An  addition  to  child  drama  which  has  been  sorely  needed." — Boston 
Transcript. 

THE  SILVER  THREAD 

AND  OTHER  FOLK  PLAYS.  "The  Silver  Thread"  (Cornish)  ; 
"The  Forest  Spring"  (Italian)  ;  "The  Foam  Maiden"  (Celtic)  ; 
"Troll  Magic"  (Norwegian)  ;  "The  Three  Wishes"  (French)  ; 
"A  Brewing  of  Brains"  (English)  ;  "Siegfried"  (German)  ; 
"The  Snow  Witch"  (Russian).  $1.10  net. 

HENRY    HOLT    AND    COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS  NEW  YORK 


BOOKS  TO  MAKE  ELDERS  YOUNG  AGAIN 
By  INEZ  HAYNES  GILLMORE 

PHOEBE  AND   ERNEST 

With  30  illustrations  by  R.  F.  SCHABELITZ.     $1.35  net. 

Parents  will  recognize  themselves  in  the  story,  and  laugh 
understandingly  with,  and  sometimes  at,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Martin 
and  their  children,  Phoebe  and  Ernest. 

"  Attracted  delighted  attention  in  the  course  of  its  serial  publication. 
Sentiment  and  humor  are  deftly  mingled  in  this  clever  book." — New 
York  Tribune. 

"  We  must  go  back  to  Louisa  Alcott  for  their  equals." — Boston  Ad- 
vertiser. 

"  For  young  and  old  alike  we  know  of  no  more  refreshing  story." — 
New  York  Evening  Post. 

PHOEBE,  ERNEST,   AND  CUPID 

Illustrated  by  R.  F.  SCHABELITZ.     $1.35  net. 
In  this  sequel  to  the  popular  "Phoebe  and   Ernest,"  each 
of   these  delightful  young  folk  goes  to  the  altar. 

"To  all  jaded  readers  of  problem  novels,  to  all  weary  wayfarers  on  the 
rocky  literary  road  of  social  pessimism  and  domestic  woe,  we  recommend 
'Phoebe,  Ernest,  and  Cupid  '  with  all  our  hearts  :  it  is  not  only  cheerful,  it's 
true."— TV.  Y.  Times  Review. 

"Wholesome,  merry,  absolutely  true  to  life."—  The  Outlook. 

"All  delicious— humorous  and  true."—  The  Continent. 

"Irresistibly  fascinating.  Mrs.  Gillmore  knows  twice  as  much  about 
college  boys  as .  and  five  times  as  much  about  girls."— Boston  Globe. 

JANEY 

Illustrated  by  ADA  C.  WILLIAMSON.    $1.25  net. 

"Being  the  record  of  a  short  interval  in  the  journey  thru 
life  and  the  struggle  with  society  of  a  little  girl  of  nine." 

"  Our  hearts  were  captive  to  '  Phoebe  and  Ernest,'  and  now  accept 
'  Janey/  .  .  .  She  is  so  engaging.  .  .  .  Told  so  vivaciously  and 
with  such  good-natured  and  pungent  asides  for  grown  people."— 
Outlook. 

"  Depicts  youthful  human  nature  as  one  who  knows  and  loves  it. 
Her  '  Phoebe  and  Ernest  '  studies  are  deservedly  popular,  and  now,  in 
'  Janey,'  this  clever  writer  has  accomplished  an  equally  charming  por- 
trait."— Chicago  Record-Herald. 

HENRY     HOLT     AND     COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS  NEW  YORK 


THIS  BOOK  I? 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROW 

LOAN  DEPT. 

RENEWALS  ONLY— TEL.  NO.  642-3405 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


SEP  1  6  1974  8  2 


EC  DOT 


-flee- 


*a»c"t.  JA.V 


ttm 


» 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


